This article, by an appeal to a lunatic idea of how to judge a map nonpartisan and not gerrymandered, casts doubt on the new Pennsylvania map, imposed by a party line vote among the judges on the state's Supreme Court.
Democrats Did Better Than on Hundreds of Simulated Pennsylvania Maps
The title at once refers to how Democrats can expect to fare in 2018, based on the map of congressional districts decided upon by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as compared to how they could expect to fare on other maps, and uses that expectation to undermine the claim to legitimacy of the court's map.
That is exactly the pro-Republican spin that pervades this article.
An article that legitimates as "nonpartisan" maps drawn according to a wholly spurious notion of what a fair and equitable map should look like and all but delegitimates the real issue, the only thing any sensible person - but apparently not necessarily any "expert" - would be looking at.
And that is whether the map unfairly advantages the party that draws it, or indeed any other.
That is, it is the whole point of gerrymandering, its intention and very definition, to create a map that violates this condition.
No, the weird shape of districts that sometimes results from gerrymandering, and from which the practise has its name, is not actually either its point or its meaning.
Only a child would think so and only a boob or a fraud among adults would say so.
The point is exactly to obtain for one's party a share of seats in one's state's delegation in the House of Representatives that is greater than its share of the statewide vote for members of the House.
That is what a gerrymandered map does; a gerrymandered map is a map that does that.
But the concern that a map not do that, represented in this article as concern with "partisan symmetry", the author addresses with some skepticism and in just a few lines that come only after many paragraphs suggesting that the new Pennsylvania map is in some illegitimate way not hard enough on the Democrats, and as he persists in describing hundreds of computer generated maps that severely disadvantage the Democrats as "simulated nonpartisan congressional districts".
The seeming contradiction between the analysis based on partisan symmetry and one based on simulated nonpartisan congressional districts gets at the heart of what may be the next big debate in gerrymandering: whether nonpartisan maps should strive for partisan symmetry, or whether they should try to avoid political considerations altogether.
The question is important because both methods of analysis are routinely employed to identify Republican gerrymanders.
And it is likely to continue to be a question, because it emerges when Democrats are at a geographic disadvantage, as they often tend to be.
Just look at Pennsylvania.
Democrats waste more votes than Republicans by carrying urban areas, like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, by more lopsided margins than the Republicans carry their best areas.
The result is that the rest of the state, and therefore the rest of its districts, tend to favor Republicans.
If one believes that partisan symmetry should be a goal in redistricting, the new map is eminently fair.
It gives both parties a similar chance to translate their votes to seats, and makes no compromises to do so; it still admirably adheres to standard nonpartisan criteria like compactness or minimizing county splits.
Democrats Did Better Than on Hundreds of Simulated Pennsylvania Maps
The next big debate in gerrymandering may be whether nonpartisan maps should strive for partisan symmetry, or whether they should try to avoid political considerations altogether.
Pennsylvania maps drawn in the latter manner - that is to say, maps drawn according to historic and geographic considerations in a manner that intentionally sets at nothing the question whether they unfairly favor any party, which is in fact the whole and only point and defining characteristic of gerrymandering - seriously disfavor Democrats for the reason stated in the excerpt above.
For exactly that reason it is a grossly pro-Republican and partisan lie to describe such maps as in any sense or manner "nonpartisan".
And there is this.
It is important to be clear on how the respective shares of the state's total congressional vote that it is reasonable to expect the several parties to get is taken into account in determining whether the state map is fair or, on the contrary, gerrymandered, which the above article, with its blather of "partisan symmetry", is not.
It is one thing to draw districts so that no party is likely to get a bigger share of the state's house delegation than it has of the state's votes for house candidates.
That prevents gerrymandering, which aims at exactly what this criterion excludes.
It prevents any party being overrepresented, and makes the map fair.
But it is another to draw districts so that no party gets a smaller share of the state's delegation than it has of the state's votes.
It might be impossible to do that for small parties with voters scattered across the state while maintaining traditional geographical properties of districts such as contiguity.
And in abandoning that we would move away from the idea that that House members should represent actual geographic districts, at all.
And in the direction of at large membership.
Not a problem for states that have only one or only a few members.
But California, Texas, and New York?
PS.
It is crucial to be clear that if we expect our state's map to be drawn by some allegedly nonpartisan commision we need that commission to be clear what it is expected to do.
It is not expected to ignore whether a possible map, however pretty or desirable it may be relative to other criteria, will likely result in some party being overrepresented.
Nor is it to consider that possibility as merely one factor to be weighed against others, as though likely overrepresentation of a give party might be an acceptable price to pay in order that all districts have a not too unpleasant shape, for instance.
On the contrary, it must see to it that the state's map does not allow overrepresentation of any single party, subject always to the higher ranking constraints first of equal representation of individual voters and second of contiguity.
Certainly, there are historical and other geometric considerations the districts may be expected to satisfy.
But they must all be subordinate to the rule that the map must not make overrepresentation likely, itself a consideration subordinated as above.
And if, to avoid that, a map must be drawn that features districts that look like salamanders kicking Donald Duck in the backside, so be it.
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