What the press gets wrong about gerrymandering 🗺

Gerrymandering is one form of election rigging – the practice of using the law by incumbents to make elections more likely to be won by their preferred candidates. It’s more controversial and covered by the press then other forms of election rigging like laws regarding petitioning ballot access, who can vote and at what time and location. But gerrymandering typical doesn’t work quite like how the press seems to think it works.

For one thing, political parties aren’t unified forces. Instead they are made up of elected officials. Politicians primarily care about one thing – their re-election. Without being in office, politicians have no power. As such, most gerrymandering isn’t actually partisan, it’s about protecting incumbents and making it easier for them to be re-elected. Gerrymandering attempts to group together groups of people who are likely to support incumbents, especially those who are in marginal districts. It also attempts to dilute down unfavorable voters either by packing them in other districts or splitting them up into multiple other districts (cracking). This is illegal to do for protected racial classes under the voting rights act but is acceptable for reasons of partisan identity or social class.

When there is an ability to flip a majority in a legislative body, or to a lesser extent a super majority to enact the implied threat of being able override a governor’s veto then partisan gerrymandering might be considered but it’s always several rungs below incumbency protection. Politicians like more power but they care about their own seats first and foremost. Speakers and Majority Leaders care about their own positions and the way they do it is by protecting their own members.

Often legislative majorities don’t actually want more majority members. While on paper it gives them an appearance of more strength it also means that legislative resources and budget appropriations must be cut into smaller slices so incumbents actually loose out. Assuming they have a majority or to a much lesser extent a super majority, picking up additional seats only makes them weaker.

Like a classic economics problem – the marginal utility of larger majorities declines significantly after majority status is obtained. That is the make and break it for a majority. After that it’s nice to have a few extra seats to allow marginal districts and disloyal members to vote no on controversial measures, but not really necessary and comes at a cost of smaller slices of the budget pie. The implied threat of a veto proof majority also is nice but again it comes at the cost of the smaller slices of the pie.

To be clear, gerrymandering isn’t a straight “win as many seats for the majority” as the press seems to think it is.