COM 0042.000 2010-2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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1. Packing "Packing" is drawing district boundary lines so that the members of the minority are concentrated, or "packed," into as few districts as possible. They become a supermajority in the packed districts 70, 80, or 90 percent. They can elect representatives from those districts, but their votes in excess of a simple majority are "wasted." They are not available to help elect representatives in other districts, so they cannot elect representatives in proportion to their numbers in the state as a whole. 2. Fracturing "Fracturing" is drawing district lines so that the minority population is broken up. Members of the minority are spread among as many districts as possible, keeping them a minority in every district, rather than permitting them to concentrate their strength enough to elect representatives in some districts. C. The Facts of Life 1. Creating a Gerrymander It is a fact of life in redistricting that the district lines are always going to be drawn by the majority in power, and that the majority will always be tempted to draw the lines in such a way as to enhance their prospects for victory at the next election. If the supporters of the minority party were distributed evenly throughout the state, there would be no need to gerrymander. In a state where the minority party had 49 percent of the vote, they would lose every seat. But I suspect that political minorities are not evenly distributed in any state, so the persons drawing the redistricting plan try to determine where they are, and draw their districts accordingly: first packing as many of them into as few districts as possible and then, where they can't be packed, fracturing them into as many districts as possible. It is this process of drawing the district lines to first pack and then fracture the minority that creates the dragon -like districts called gerrymanders. 2. The Need for Limits The more freedom the majority has to determine where the district boundary lines will go, the greater the temptation to gerrymander. Equal - population requirements, disfavor of multimember districts, and minority representation requirements are all attempts by the courts to restrain the majority from taking unfair advantage of their majority position when drawing redistricting plans. II. Draw Districts of Equal Population A. Use Official Census Bureau Population Counts 1. Alternative Population Counts The first requirement for any redistricting plan to stand up in court is to provide districts of substantially equal population. But how do you know the population? The obvious way is to use official Census Bureau population counts from the 2000 census. It is true that some legislatures have chosen to use data other than the Census Bureau's population counts to draw their districts and have had their plans upheld by federal courts. For