You Can't Compete With Voters' Feet

AUSTIN When not a single California congressional or state legislative seat changed political party in last year's election, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted with his signature bluntness. "What kind of democracy is that?" he demanded. Blaming the lack of competitiveness in all the races on state legislators who in 2000 created voting districts guaranteed to preserve their own seats and their respective parties' dominance, Schwarzenegger has proposed taking control of redistricting away from partisan politicians and entrusting it to a panel of retired judges.

On the virtues of this plan, the unconventional governor has a lot of conventional company. Many see independent redistricting, free from the possibility of gerrymandering -- the practice of drawing a voting district to one party's advantage -- as the route to resurrecting competitive elections and resuscitating democracy.

But the paucity of competitive elections isn't simply something created by diabolical legislators or nerdy mapmakers. It has been, in large measure, an inside job, the result of citizens who, given the choice, would prefer to live among those most like themselves. Taking redistricting away from the politicians may do something about the appearance of partisanship in the legislature, but it can't change the actual partisanship that resides in our communities.

Schwarzenegger has a point, of course. Most legislative races aren't competitive. In U.S. House races in 2004, only seven of 401 incumbents lost. Only 22 races were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points.

But when the early-19th-century Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry redrew a state Senate seat to his party's advantage in a shape that looked like a salamander -- thus enshrining the "gerrymander" forevermore -- was he contributing to the demise of democracy in the 21st century? Several political scientists who study congressional elections don't think so.

Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, measured the "competitiveness" of congressional districts in a recent study. He used presidential election returns to get a sense of whether congressional districts vote more Republican or Democratic than the nation as a whole. Abramowitz found that over the past 30 years, there have been fewer and fewer districts where Republicans and Democrats are evenly mixed. But redistricting doesn't seem to be the cause.

Abramowitz reasoned that if partisan redistricting were causing the decline in competitive House races, then there should be a jump in non-competitive districts -- defined as districts that are 10 percentage points more Republican or Democratic than the nation as a whole -- right after legislative redistricting, which by law must occur after the new census every 10 years. But Abramowitz found no discernible increase after the new districts were drawn. Instead, districts grew most lopsided in between redistricting years. So other factors must be at work.

Yes, legislatures can still gerrymander to get rid of incumbents. The Texas legislature did that in 2003, under House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's tutelage, when it drew congressional districts in a way that led to the defeat of four incumbent Democrats last November. But Abramowitz contends that the unusual mid-decade redistricting simply recognized the growing partisanship in Texas.

"I keep hearing Democrats saying that Republicans basically stole those seats by redistricting again," said Abramowitz, who describes himself as a liberal Democrat. "The fact is, that's a minor issue. The underlying reality is that states like Texas and Georgia have been trending Republican. Sooner or later, more likely sooner, that was going to translate into a Republican takeover of the congressional delegation."

This is also true nationally. More people are choosing where to live based on demographic factors that now align with political party. In effect, voters themselves are largely responsible for tipping the balance in many districts by moving to where they can find neighbors of like mind.

Vanderbilt University professor Bruce Oppenheimer has a simple way of testing whether gerrymandering is increasing partisanship in congressional districts. He recently studied the seven states that have only one representative in the House -- Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North and South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming -- to compare their behavior in the 1960 and 2000 presidential elections. Since their borders are unchanging, whatever has happened in the past four decades can't be the result of redistricting.

The national vote in both the 1960 and 2000 presidential elections was evenly split. But over the 40 years between those two elections, these seven single-district states grew more partisan than the average congressional district. In 1960, the winning candidate for president (whether Republican or Democrat) in these seven states received an average 53.1 percent of the vote. In 2000, however, the winning candidate received an average 62.9 percent of the vote.