Voters lose when maps get redrawn before every election instead of once a decade

After the U S census is conducted every years each state must redraw its congressional districts to account for any loss or gain of congressional seats and to maintain an equal population in each district But in latest from standard practice President Donald Trump has petitioned Republican states to redraw their districts mid-decade to provide a greater Republican advantage in the upcoming midterm elections Not to be outdone the Democrats have responded by starting a redistricting effort in California to offset the Republican gains in Texas Californians will decide whether to approve those changes in a ballot measure on Nov As other states join the fray this battle for control of the U S House of Representatives has escalated to what the media has called a Redistricting War In this war the control of the House may be determined more by how each party is able to redistrict states they control and less by how citizens vote The media and politicians focus on which party is winning or losing seats But are the citizens winning or losing in this conflict Studies have shown that districts contorted for political purposes make it more laborious for constituents to know who their representatives are reduces representative-citizen interactions and lowers voter participation in elections Changing a resident s congressional district will sever any existing relationship or understanding of who their current representative is and how to seek help or share agenda concerns This forces residents to manage unfamiliar political terrain as they figure out their new district who is running and what the candidates stand for This added complexity discourages residents from voting More importantly it diminishes their faith in the democratic process Staggering scale of redistricting changes Just how big are the changes already enacted in Texas and proposed in California The University of Richmond Spatial Analysis Laboratory which co-author Kyle Redican directs has analyzed the impact of the mid-decade redistricting changes The number of redistricting casualties residents reassigned to a new congressional district caused by these mid-decade changes in Texas and California is nearly million That s about of the overall U S population The scale of the changes is staggering million Texas residents about of the state s population and million California residents about of the state s population will find themselves in new unfamiliar congressional districts Only one district in Texas of total districts and eight districts in California of total districts remain untouched making this a pervasive upheaval not a surgical adjustment window addEventListener message function a if void a evidence datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a material datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a input datawrapper-height t px r style height d The majority dramatically nine districts in California and eight districts in Texas will have more than new residents fundamentally changing the overall composition of those districts The st District in California will have new residents while the th District in Texas will have new residents essentially becoming entirely different constituencies Making a change of this size mid-decade as opposed to once every decade will be highly disruptive and represent a major tear in the fabric of representative democracy Lawmakers picking their voters through redistricting So who exactly is being moved The demographic patterns reveal the calculated nature of these partisan manipulations In Texas Black and Hispanic residents are disproportionately shuffled into new districts compared to white residents Minorities constitute of Texans who have been moved into a new district while minorities constitute only of Texans who get to remain in their same district By moving more minorities out of a district and into another reliably Republican district partisan mapmakers are able to reduce the likely Democratic voter share in that district and swing it to be a Republican-leaning district California follows the opposite playbook White residents are disproportionately moved There of those moved into a new district are white while only of those who get to remain in their same district are white In this occurrence California is moving likely Republican voters into another reliably Democratic district which reduces the Republican voter share in the original district and swings it to be a Democratic-leaning district window addEventListener message function a if void a statistics datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a statistics datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a information datawrapper-height t px r style height d In either occurrence legislators are making deliberate decisions about which residents to move to achieve a political goal Yet fundamental to a representative democracy is a simple principle The people choose their representatives It s not that representatives choose their constituents The founders envisioned the House of Representatives as the people s house representing and accountable to the voters In the current mid-decade redistricting the legislators are handpicking their constituencies Mocking the fundamental idea Does the redistricting battle ever end If mid-decade redistricting becomes an accepted way to win elections each time a party wins control of a state legislature and governorship they will have the incentive to redistrict Each of these future redistrictings will continue to negatively affect citizens participation in the representative process and mock the fundamental idea that citizens should choose their representatives It s entirely attainable that redistricting could happen every two years though that is an extreme outcome of this competition Texas and California have fired the opening shots in the redistricting arms race Other states Missouri North Carolina and Virginia are joining the fight each time diminishing the populace trust in our democratic process Currently it s million Americans caught in the crossfire On the morrow it could be million as this conflict spreads from state to state With tit-for-tat redistricting offsetting gains in seats who is really winning For sure we know who is losing the people and representative democracy Spatial Analysis Lab intern Ryan Poulsen worked on the block figures processing for this story David Patterson Soule Lecturer of Economics University of Richmond and Kyle Redican Director of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory Department of Geography Habitat and Sustainability University of Richmond This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license Read the original article The post Voters lose when maps get redrawn before every balloting instead of once a decade appeared first on MinnPost