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September 01, 2005
Side Effects of Gerrymandering
According to the Earle of East Lake, one of several contributing factors to Rossville Boulevard's arguable state of urban decay is gerrymandering. I had never thought of this as a cause, but the idea is worth pursuing.
As I'm sure you know, "gerrymandering" is the practice of modifying electoral districts' boundaries so that each district contains a "safe" number of like voters. Since we largely have a two-party system in this country, Democrats and Republicans essentially reach compromise on drawing up the districts, so the percentage of "safe" districts each can claim roughly correlates to the percentage of the applicable legislative body each party controls.
As I hope you also know, political districts are supposed to be drawn according to population numbers, so that our governments retain a fair apportionment of representatives to constituents. I once thought that Congressional districts are required to be evaluated and adjusted every ten years, after each census is completed (but remember all the flack a couple of years ago about off-schedule redistricting in Texas?). I could use some refreshers on how often national, state and local districts are re-drawn. (Enlighten me in the Comments to this post, if you know.)
One of our own Tennessee Congressmen, Rep. John Tanner of District 8, has introduced legislation that would require the establishment of independent redistricting commissions, and that would firm up the schedule to the ten-year interval I thought we already had. I've suffered disappointments with Congressman Tanner's votes on other matters, but on this issue I believe he is in the right place (even though I do anticipate a healthy states' rights argument against such a Congressional mandate). According to the linked editorial, he has bipartisan co-sponsors for the bill.
Tanner's bill would help avoid situations like Texas 2003, and districts shaped like our very own 3rd, but it would not directly impact the situation we started looking at, where Rossville Boulevard straddles Chattanooga City Council and Hamilton County Commission districts alike. What can we do about local district gerrymandering? In fairness, an argument can be made for dividing districts along major arteries like US-27, instead of the carving-up that happens deep into neighborhoods, where people on one side of the street live in a different district than their neighbors'. But the Earle does bring up an important issue, and one that applies to more than just Rossville Boulevard: Does the lack of contiguous political real estate contribute to blight? Districts are comprised of precincts, and precincts are (or should be, I submit) made up of neighborhoods. If a geographically and socially defined area gets split among multiple districts, just so blocs of voters can "belong" to those districts' incumbent candidates/parties, does the resultant lack of electoral cohesion lend itself to other breakdowns in community? This is interesting stuff.
Gerrymandering has been around for a long time -- its namesake helped sign the Declaration of Independence (and if this is not proof that the so-called Founding Fathers weren't infallible, I don't know what is) -- but it has been wrought to a point beyond excess. It leads to the automatic disenfranchisement of up to 49% of a given district, and to an artificial advantage for incumbents (as is evidenced by their extremely high rate of re-election). Politicians who feel "safe" in their gerrymandered districts are susceptible to the erosion of accountability. The list of problems goes on..
Community | By joe lance | 09:01 AM