Democracy sometimes is best described as governance by discussion, not voting. That discussion needs to happen both broadly in public, and in a concentrated way in the state legislature. Citizens can provide feedback to state representatives in part by voting them out of office, but better by communicating with them directly.
by Nathanael Snow, Ph.D.
Indiana, like most other states, redraws its Congressional voting districts every 10 years when a new Census comes out. Shifts in population within and among states require that new lines are drawn to balance the number of citizens represented in each district. This helps to preserve the connection of citizens to their representatives, who are responsible for making decisions about how to spend the Federal government’s budget.
Participants from every part of the political spectrum get excited about the process of drawing Congressional lines. Each perceives an electoral advantage to be gained or fears such an advantage might be lost. In today’s political climate states are considering making changes to the lines outside of the usual time. This is a bad idea, not because of how it might affect midterm elections, but because it probably won’t, but because it sets a bad precedent for political processes, and because the effort will waste a great deal of time and resources.
Both parties have engaged in opportunism, making rash changes to policy and pushing the boundaries of constitutionality in the way policy changes have been enacted. The use of the Executive order has been abused. Congress has abdicated much of its responsibility to the Executive. The structure of checks and balances is out of whack. When policy is set arbitrarily and constitutional constraints are not respected we generate a more tumultuous environment, increase uncertainty, and disrupt economic growth and the lives of families. Arbitrarily changing the time when redistricting occurs moves further in this dangerous direction.
Gerrymandering is easy to recognize, but impossible to resolve. There is no possible mechanism for fairly drawing district lines. Arrangement of Indiana’s voters into districts can be done in a way that gives each party (neglecting the possibility of a third party) the number of representatives in Congress that matches the proportion of Indiana voters from each party. Or the districts could be drawn such that the minority party or majority party gets more than the proportional share of representatives. But given the shifts in public sentiment and the number of swing voting Independents, it is impossible to draw the lines in any way that can guarantee a desired outcome in the midterm elections.
An alternative mechanism, that would give each party a share of seats that best reflects the attitudes of voters, would be proportional representation, as is practiced in some other countries. However, the tradeoff of such an approach is that citizens lose their connection to a particular representative. Similarly, districts could be drawn such that common concerns within geographic regions are bundled together, regardless of party connection. However, voters might feel they have more in common with people who live in a different region, and their interests might not be well represented.
In short, there is no perfect solution. That is why we have not allocated some sort of computer program for drawing the districts but have left it to the democratic process, with lines being drawn as a result of negotiations within the state legislature.
Democracy sometimes is best described as governance by discussion, not voting. That discussion needs to happen both broadly in public, and in a concentrated way in the state legislature. Citizens can provide feedback to state representatives in part by voting them out of office, but better by communicating with them directly.
The recent news of proposals to redraw district lines outside the usual time will simply impede on the time that the state legislature needs in the coming session to deal with more pertinent matters of governance, something we are in short supply of lately. Changing the district lines now will waste the time of our elected officials and will increase the influence of the Federal government on the State of Indiana. It would set a bad precedent for constitutional processes and norms. It would increase the opportunism and arbitrariness of policy making. It would in the end not make much difference at all and would certainly not establish a more fair or just allocation of voters to districts.
For the Indiana legislature to take up redistricting at this time would be a distraction.
Nathanael Snow, an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics at Ball State University and Affiliated Scholar with the Institute for the Study of Political Economy. He researches the constitution of informal social groups the political economy of Archbishop Richard Whately, and the economic history of the abolition of slavery.
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