The Pursuit of Happiness

Gerrymandering is a political maneuver that draws voting district lines based on voting habits of residents rather than on any rational geographic basis. Consequently, many voting districts look like blobs of spaghetti sauce splattered onto a kitchen floor; the political party in power has redrawn district lines to include – or exclude – specific neighborhoods or towns based solely on historical voting patterns.  

Both Democrats and Republicans do it, but Republicans do it better. In the 2012 Congressional House races, “better” meant that, even though Democrats won 1.7 million more votes than their Republican opponents, they lost 33 House seats they would have ordinarily won but didn’t because of redistricting. The problem of gerrymandering clearly undermines basic majority rule outcomes.

In a 2004 Supreme Court case, 5 of the 9 Justices agreed that gerrymandering violated the Constitution, but because they couldn’t come up with a fix, they tossed the case. They left the door open for future appeals, however, if litigants could present a formula measuring how district lines placed a burden on the people’s right to representation.

Two political scientists, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos and Eric M. McGhee, have come up with that formula. It’s called “the efficiency gap,” and it measures “lost votes” cast in favor of a defeated candidate and “surplus votes” cast in favor of a winning candidate that aren’t actually necessary for a candidate’s victory. The efficiency gap is the difference between the parties’ respective votes in an election, divided by the total number of votes cast.

The problem of gerrymandering isn’t a Conservative or Liberal problem; it pushes politicians toward ideologically fringe positions that only work for extremists, high dollar donors, or Political Action Committees invested exclusively in self-serving agendas. People like us, who often represent majority-held viewpoints and values, are left out in the cold. It’s the only reason Donald Trump is President of the United States.

The non-partisan Campaign Legal Center will present the efficiency gap formula to the US Supreme Court during the next scheduled session. It is not an overstatement to say that the integrity of the Republic and our democratic way of life hangs in the balance.