Volume 20, Issue 3-4

Coming out of the 2020 redistricting cycle, independent redistricting commissions are the clear winners, with most maps drawn by independent commissions being upheld against legal challenges, while other state maps face significant claims of vote dilution and partisan gerrymandering. While a growing literature debates the institutional designs of commissions and assess and compare their mapping outcomes, this article will offer a commissioner’s view of the process. Reflecting on my service on the 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission, I will argue that while independent commissions are not a magic bullet, they are the best option for redistricting that allows for transparency over backroom negotiations and can, hopefully, help restore some faith in our democratic institutions.

American democracy is currently heavily reliant on plurality in single-member districts, or PSMD, as a system of election. But public perceptions of fairness are often keyed to partisan proportionality, or the degree of congruence between each party’s share of the vote and its share of representation. PSMD has not tended to secure proportional outcomes historically, partially due to gerrymandering, where line-drawers intentionally extract more advantage for their side. But it is now increasingly clear that even blind PSMD is frequently disproportional, and in unpredictable ways that depend on local political geography. In this paper we consider whether it is feasible to bring PSMD into alignment with a proportionality norm by targeting proportional outcomes in the design and selection of districts. We do this mainly through a close examination of the “Freedom to Vote Test,” a redistricting reform proposed in draft legislation in 2021. We find that applying the test with a proportionality target makes for sound policy: it performs well in legal battleground states and has a workable exception to handle edge cases where proportionality is out of reach.

Redistricting is a politically fraught exercise. Recently, new technology has emerged that has the potential to improve the redistricting process by providing information to aid in judicial oversight. These scientific advances create the potential to improve societal governance but are also potentially manipulable by partisan interests. To avoid these negative externalities, we must thoughtfully design the processes, implement safeguards, and have clear policies that regulate and steer the emerging AI toward democratically favorable goals. We propose institutional changes toward these aims.

In this article, we examine the six dueling incumbent U.S. House primaries in the 2022 midterm elections. Our principal aim is to answer the question: Who wins these rare but consequential contests that ensure one incumbent does not return to Congress? Contrary to the intuition that retaining more of one’s previous constituents is a considerable electoral advantage, district- and precinct-level data suggest this was not pivotal. Instead, in these four Democrat versus Democrat and two Republican versus Republican dueling incumbent primaries, explanations for winning or losing appear to hinge on other factors. For the Republican races, former President Trump’s endorsement appears to have gone a long way in influencing the outcome. In the Democratic contests, descriptive representation, ideological fit, and intra-party meddling and a scandal, played a part in determining the victor.