Redistricting in the U.S.: A Review of Scholarship and Plan for Future Research

Abstract

The nation-wide cycle of redistricting is the most consequential, repetitive decision-making process shaping the nature of American democracy. Because the arrangement of the districts forms an essential part of the “rules of the game,” the process by which they are drawn is meta-politics or a quasi-constitution making activity. The research on this process is voluminous and includes bits and pieces of the process. But the process is complicated, in part because the criteria for redistricting are in conflict with one another. The criteria include considerations of political geography, physical features, community of interest, one person one vote, race and ethnicity, partisanship, contiguity, compactness, recognition of local political boundaries, incumbents’ addresses, and desires for minimal change. The literature also covers the use of geographic information systems in the process and possible reforms. But no overall theory of redistricting has been developed which includes all these features.

Inter‐person Separation: A New Objective Standard for Evaluating the Spatial Fairness of Political Redistricting Plans

“…In political districting, various similarity–comparison criteria might potentially be employed to avoid splitting communities of interest, including socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, urban or rural classification. (Arrington ). It is often the case, however, that the most integrated regions as evaluated on one aspect do not coincide with those based on other of the criteria; any sort of generalized, multi‐criteria concept of community of interest has been too difficult and politically problematic to mandate for political districts (Williams 2005), with the courts narrowly focused on the preservation of voting rights for protected racial/ethnic minorities.…”

Mass Preferences on Shared Representation and the Composition of Legislative Districts

“…This concept of communities of interest plays a major role in the literature on redistricting, either in describing what districts should look like, or in criticizing the disregard of such principles in blatant partisan gerrymanders. The term, however, suffers from a great deal of ambiguity (Arrington, 2010;Malone, 1997), only roughly denoting certain considerations pertaining to geography and intuitions about places that "belong together" in districts. Often, the term is simply taken to mean that districting plans should not split cities, counties, and other political subdivisions.…”

Gerrymandering Politics Out of the Redistricting Process: Toward a Planning Revolution in Redrawing Local Legislative Boundaries

“…Rather than conducting an extensive review of PRP models, I choose to highlight an important gap. Namely, while there are attempts to operationalize "communities of interest" in PRP models (e.g., Patrick 2010), and discussions of possible representations of communities in redistricting literature (e.g., Morrill 1981;Arrington 2010;Forest 2004), these discussions occur at the state and national levels. There are far fewer conversations in the literature about redistricting strategies in municipalities and operationalization of neighborhoods therein.…”

“…To that end I argue that, while population equality must remain a principal goal of local redistricting plans, it can be traded-off for preserving communities of interest if: (a) communities are well-defined and (b) preserving welldefined communities necessitates insubstantial district population inequalities. Thus criterion 5, often the most elusive to satisfy (Arrington 2010), becomes central to the planning approach to local redistricting.…”