Election Day is tomorrow. It’s not a presidential election year, so your ballot might just be city council and nothing higher ranking than that. It’s still extremely important. Not every vote counts the same, but every vote does count for something, and it’s important enough that the pathologically wealthy are paying attention, and putting their thumbs on the scale, so to speak.
I mentioned to Kate that I had this idea for a glossary of redistricting terminology. It’s one of those ideas that I wish I could have thought of and executed earlier, when it would have been much more impactful. Redistricting’s already done in some states.
But there are glossaries out there already, like the glossary from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Still, it might be worthwhile for Daily Kos staffers or community members to put together a comprehensive glossary from a progressive perspective.
To help such an effort, I’ve decided to publish what I’ve got so far and maybe some of you who are more knowledgeable about these things can explain these terms better than I can.
What I’m going to do here today is pick out a few terms from the NCSL glossary and expand a little bit on them, the ones that I think are less well known or less obvious, or the ones that are well known but perhaps not understood all that clearly. Most of the quotes come from the NCSL.
Alternative population base (APB)
So redistricting is somehow tied to Census data, but you don’t actually have to use Census data to draw districts? Another page from the NCSL explains that
The United States Constitution, Article I, Section 2 requires congressional apportionment to be based on an “enumeration” of the U.S. population. However, the Constitution is silent on what data is to be used for redistricting.
The standard practice in the states, over the last few decades, was to use the federal decennial census data.
Only twenty-two states mandate the use of Census data. Seventeen states, including Michigan, do not explicitly require the use of Census data. Five states allow other data sources depending on the circumstances.
Could this be significant? Please let me know in the comments.
Compactness
A lot of the redistricting discussion focuses on compactness. If a voting district consists of a single county with a rectangular shape, then the perception is that it is a fairly drawn district.
But if instead a single county has incursions from more than two districts, the perception is then that there are some shenanigans going on.
Formally, compactness is defined as a district
Having the minimum distance between all the parts of a constituency (a circle, square or a hexagon are examples of very compact district). Various methods have been developed to measure compactness.
In the diagram above, looking at the apportionment in the middle, we see that the greatest possible distance between two points in the same district is √29 units, roughly 5.39. But in the apportionment shown on the right, there are two districts for which a distance between two points in the same district can be as much as √41, roughly 6.4.
Much more importantly, many trips between two points in the same district require going into other districts. This makes a big impact for candidates and their campaign staff traveling throughout the district. But of course if you know the district has been gerrymandered to give you the win, why bother touring the whole district?
We should not focus only on compactness, nor lose sight of other considerations that might give legitimate reasons to split a county or other obvious entity that could be a single district (such as a big city). But compactness should still be given due consideration. If a district boundary goes along too many alleys and minor streets, that reduces confidence that the district was drawn fairly.
Cracking
Diluting the voting power of a group of people by splitting them among different districts. Once again refer to the diagram above. Suppose that the middle district in the middle apportionment is a majority black district. But by the apportionment on the right, they are split up among three different districts.
Kidnapping
Have you ever seen a district tendril that seems to be drawn to get just one house? A comment from bellist might have the explanation:
If your opponent has a dynamic candidate in one district, carve out his residence and put it in another district where he is less known and has to start over building name recognition or maybe have to face another popular candidate.
Majority-minority district
A district in which a racial or linguistic minority constitutes the majority. Having minorities while also having zero majority-minority districts is bad. Having at least one majority-minority district might be a legitimate reason to create a district that is not as compact as it could be from a purely mathematical viewpoint.
Natural boundaries
Rivers, mountains, etc. A district boundary that follows a river might be perceived as fair. A district boundary that crosses a river several times might not be perceived as fair.
Packing
This is “when one group is consolidated as a super-majority in a smaller number of districts, thus reducing its electoral influence in nearby districts.” If I’m understanding correctly, packing is the opposite of cracking.
EDIT: I misunderstood, cracking and packing are not opposites, they are two different but closely related techniques for diluting the opposing party’s voting power. See bellist’s comment for an explanation. Applied to the diagram above, one could pack a lot of blue voters into one safely blue district and crack the rest of the blue voters into safely red districts.
Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER)
This is the “system and digital database developed at the U.S. Census Bureau to support computer maps used by the census.”
Voting age population (VAP)
This one is fairly self-explanatory, as long as you don’t forget to give the acronym expansion once close to the top. It’s simply the people who are old enough to vote.