Do Independent Redistricting Commissions Produce Neutral Maps?

Do Independent Redistricting Commissions Produce Neutral Maps?

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…
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Video: A Neat Lesson on Less Obvious Gerrymanders

Video: A Neat Lesson on Less Obvious Gerrymanders

People often often associate gerrymandering with "ugly," districts that have tortured boundaries, but  many gerrymanders are quite pretty.  This tutorial on gerrymandering by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project is one of the best  visualizations of how gerrymandering can masquerade as a visually appealing map with compact districts.   (more…)
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