Suchergebnisse

"Redistricting and Representation argues that competition in general elections is not the sine qua non of healthy democracy, and that it in fact contributes to the low levels of approval of Congress and its members. Brunell makes the case for a radical departure from traditional approaches to redistricting - arguing that we need to "pack" districts with as many like-minded partisans as possible, maximizing the number of winning voters, not losers."--Jacket

In this response to Wink & Weber's article "Do Democrats & Republicans Pay the Same Price for Seats in the US State Lower House Elections?" (2005), the author investigates recent federal decisions on redistricting to argue that partisan bias in electoral maps is a very serious concern, but that courts cannot be counted on to do anything about it. Recent court decisions in the cases of LULAC v. Perry & Vieth v. Jubeliler are related to Wink & Weber's argument that Republicans are favored in state legislative elections around the country due to turnout related bias and that the bias stems from unequal distribution of the vote across districts. The author refutes Wink & Weber's suggestions for remediation "cheap seats" & turnout related bias by reducing the size of lower state legislative chambers or linking demographic & partisan factors in redrawing straight legislative district lines as misdirected solutions. Although the author does agree with increasing voter turnout through a variety of methods such as mail-in balloting & voting on weekends, the answer to the question of what to do about turnout bias in American elections is concluded to be -- nothing. References. J. Harwell

At the end of the 2006 term, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision with respect to the Texas redistricting controversy. While in its decision (LULAC v. Perry) the court struck down one of the newly drawn districts (the 23rd) the case is more notable for what the court did not do. The Court did not see anything in the Constitution indicating that state legislatures are restricted as to when redistricting ought to be done. Traditionally the process is done after the new census data is delivered, usually in years ending in 1, and the new districts are in effect for elections in years ending in a 2. The state government in Texas was still divided in 2001 and a federal court ended up drawing new district boundaries, but after the GOP gained control in the next election they decided to redraw the congressional district lines more to their advantage for the 2004 election. Moreover a big part of the litigation was the claim that the Republicans had treated the Democrats unfairly enough in the new map that it constituted a partisan gerrymander and the Court, the Democrats claimed, ought to step in and doing something about it. The Justices did not strike down the map on these grounds and it is still unclear to most observers if the Court will step into the fray at some late date with respect to this issue.

In every contested election there are inevitably winners and losers,
both among the candidates and among the voters. Some candidates will
take their seats as elected officials, and others will not. Some
voters will be happy with the outcome, others will not. Here I seek
to better understand the relationship between whether a voter casts
a ballot for the winning candidate in U.S. House elections and that
voter's evaluations of her representative. I build on a burgeoning
literature on the relationship between voters and their elected
governments to derive and test a theory about this connection. The
data will show that voters whose preferred candidate wins a seat in
the House of Representatives are systematically happier with their
representative than those voters whom did not vote for the winning
candidate. While this finding is not especially groundbreaking, the
implications for the way in which we draw congressional and state
legislative district lines are quite provocative. Specifically,
since district lines in the House are necessarily an artificial
construct, I argue that map makers ought to "pack" districts with as
many like-minded partisans as possible. Trying to draw "competitive
districts" effectively cracks ideologically congruent voters into
separate districts, which has the effect of increasing the absolute
number of voters who will be unhappy with the outcome and
dissatisfied with their representative. I discuss the benefits of
fundamentally rethinking the way in which we draw congressional and
state legislative districts, as well as address likely concerns that
might be raised about drawing districts this way. I would like to thank Jim Adams, Valerie Brunell,
Bruce Cain, Geoff Evans, Bill Koetzle, Bernie Grofman, Sam
Hirsch, Michael D. McDonald, Iain McLean, Sam Merrill, Glenn
Phelps, David Rueda, Alec Stone Sweet, Chris Wlezian, and the
Politics Group at Nuffield College for their comments.