After the Supreme Court’s exit from the partisan gerrymandering business last week, the focus will likely turn to the states. The call for independent redistricting commissions will be key to any reform strategy.
A group of government and political science professors provided some insight into the question of whether these commissions actually work to produce nonpartisan, or “less” partisan maps. Their preliminary evidence suggests that it does.
“The nonpartisan-drawn maps tended to be more symmetrical on average after redistricting. In other words, they tended to treat both parties similarly. This suggests that nonpartisan bodies have successfully neutralized partisan bias, as intended.”
The Monkey Cage: “Here’s how to fix partisan gerrymandering, now that the Supreme Court kicked it back to the states.” Washingtonpost.com July 2, 2019.
The maps in this study that were drawn by independent commissions did have a partisan bias but both parties appeared to benefit from the bias when compared to maps drawn by partisan or bipartisan entities. With the states likely being the next battleground against political gerrymandering, academic evidence such as this could become an important tool for reformers. Read the entire story on the Washington Post.
