Berks Barrister Winter 2018 - 8

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Why Is Everyone
talking about
gerrymandering?
By Theresa Martin Golding, Esquire

t has famously been described as Goofy kicking Donald Duck, but this
drawing is no cartoon. It's Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District,
one of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country. It
stretches, dips, cuts, and curves in a highly contorted fashion over five separate
counties, lumping together Pennsylvania voters from the Maryland border
with voters north of Reading and those living east of Blue Bell.
Is there a reason anyone should care? Haven't politicians been engaging in
gerrymandering since Eldridge Gerry, its namesake, approved a salamandershaped district in Massachusetts back in 1812? Whether you are a Republican,
a Democrat or an Independent, there is plenty of reason to care.

Competitive Elections Create Robust Representation

This work is in the public domain in the United
States because it is a work prepared by an officer or
employee of the United States Government as part
of that person's official duties under the terms of
Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the
US Code. See Copyright.
1

With the advent of mapping technologies, voter-sorting software and
political data-mining, partisan legislators now use very precise tools to draw
district boundary lines around the voters that they want, creating exceptionally
safe seats. Detailed voter databases provide legislative mapmakers with
extraordinarily in-depth information about citizens - where they shop, what
products they purchase from CVS with reward cards, whether they belong
to unions or advocacy groups, and even whether they hold fishing or hunting
licenses.1 All this data fed into redistricting software allows legislators to
cherry-pick their voters and create districts that are scientifically engineered to
reelect them.
Legislators in reliably safe seats have no incentive to work with their
colleagues across the aisle or even to address constituents' concerns. Elections
are not competitive and are usually decided in the low-voter-turnout
primaries. In 2016, in a shocking 57% of Pennsylvania state house general
election races, just one person was on the ballot. The opposition party did
not even field a candidate. Over 91% of races had an incumbent running for
reelection and 86% of races had no primary opponent. Pennsylvania voters feel
disenfranchised, and rightly so.

Chris Evans, It's the Autonomy, Stupid: Political Data-Mining and Voter Privacy in the Information Age, 13 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 867, 883-84 (2012).

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Berks Barrister Winter 2018

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