For the Sake of Science

As I’ve said several times in the past, gerrymandering hurts the nation:

Take Georgia, where jockeying has begun in advance of a state General Assembly session to redraw boundaries for seats in Congress and the state legislature. Some observers expect that U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop — a black Democrat serving a constituency that’s half white — will end up with a heavily black base after black voters are redrawn out of the district won last year by Republican U.S. Rep. Austin Scott. That way, Scott can concentrate on solidifying his support among overwhelmingly white tea partiers.

“In political terms, it’s resegregating the South,” Harpootlian said. “Without those majority-minority districts in the South, Republicans would not have come to the dominance they have come to.”

This article happens to be about racial gerrymandering, but this sort of redistricting is bad in all its forms. Whatever party gets the opportunity to redraw lines will do so in its own favor. This is a big part of the reason we get such polarization in our politics.

It will probably never happen, but there needs to be a constitutional amendment regulating how federal districts are drawn. There ought to be an objective formula that draws lines in box or near-box shapes based upon population. The only deviations should be relatively minor ones, much in the way time zones deviate for practical reasons.

We could get a few wingnuts from both sides of the aisle out of Congress if we were smart about this.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: Gerrymandering, Segregation |