qm_spring

irginia

apitol

onnections

, S

pring

2015

campaigning for a job that pays just $17,640 a year is unpleasant, and

raising money for campaigns is another area of major concern for

the democratic process, but an uncontested election is surely not the

desired outcome in a democracy.

According to an analysis of congressional districts conducted by

Azavea, a geospatial software firm, Virginia ranks low on measures

of district compactness, which in turn is evidence of gerrymandering.

There are several ways to measure this, and on one such measure

Virginia ranked fourth among the 45 states with more than one

congressional district for uncompact districts. On two other measures,

Virginia ranked seventh. Democratic party-dominated Maryland

ranked number one on most measures; indeed Azavea shows that

states controlled by Democrats tend to have less compact districts.

States, like Virginia, with split control of the legislature at the time

of the redistricting, tend to have the most compact districts, but this

did not seem to hold true in the Commonwealth. These analyses do

adjust for geographic features, such as Virginia’s irregular land and

water boundaries.

Gerrymandering is associated with lower levels of electoral

competitiveness in Virginia. An analysis conducted by Ballotpedia

measures state legislatures for the degree of competitiveness

according to elections contested by both of the major parties, primary

challenges to incumbents, and the number of incumbents who seek

reelection. On these measures, Virginia ranked near the bottom

(between 41st and 45th) in both the 2010-2011 and 2012-2013 cycles,

with the exception of a rank of 22nd for the number incumbents

seeking reelection in 2011. Evidence that low levels of competition

reduce voter turnout requires a more exhaustive district-by-district

analysis than I conduct here. It is true that the lowest turnout rates

in Virginia occur in years where there are no statewide races on the

ballot, such as in 2011 when turnout hit a low of 28.6%.

The outcome of Virginia’s gerrymandered House of Delegates

leads to the potential that the legislature fails to represent the public’s

general policy preferences. To admittedly cherry-pick one example,

a public opinion poll conducted by the Judy Ford Wason Center for

Public Policy at Christopher Newport University found that 61% of

Virginians favored Medicaid expansion, but Governor McAuliffe’s

proposal to do just that has been repeatedly blocked by the majority

in the House of Delegates.

Reform measures have been pushed since at least 1998 when

Delegate Kenneth Plum proposed the creation of the Virginia

Advisory Redistricting Commission. This would have proposed

redistricting maps to the General Assembly, which would then go

through the usual legislative process to produce the final maps.

This proposal got nowhere in the House. In 2005, Delegate Jim

Shuler proposed a constitutional amendment to create the Virginia

Redistricting Commission, which would draw the final maps without

consideration of political data or incumbency. Unsurprisingly, this

proposal did not prosper. More recently, a 2010 bipartisan effort led

by Senators Creigh Deeds (D) and Jill Holtzman Vogel (R) to create

the Bipartisan Redistricting Commission, which like Delegate’s Plum

1998 bill would submit a map to the legislature, passed the Senate

but died in the House of Delegates. Similar efforts have appeared

in each regular session of the General Assembly in recent years. In

2011, Governor Bob McDonnell created the Independent Bipartisan

Advisory Commission to oversee the redistricting process, and this

Commission did produce maps, but the Commission was unable to

much influence the General Assembly’s redistricting efforts.

Thirteen states have some form of an independent redistricting

commission that has the exclusive authority to draw the district

maps. Azavea’s analysis notes that congressional districts are

more compact, i.e. less gerrymandered, in states that use these

commissions. A constitutional challenge to such commissions,

Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting

Commission

, was heard by the Supreme Court on March 2, 2015, but

at stake here is whether a state can adopt a redistricting commission

through popular initiative, something not available to Virginia voters,

and whether these commissions can draw maps of congressional

districts. Plaintiffs in this case make no claim that such commissions

are unconstitutional for the purposes of drawing state legislative lines.

Virginia’s congressional district lines were overturned by the

Federal District Court in Richmond on October 7, 2014 in

Page v.

Virginia State Board of Elections

. At stake here is whether Virginia’s

Third District is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court

was at pains to explain that the district when drawn would probably

have passed constitutional muster, but the subsequent Supreme Court

decision in

Shelby County v. Holder

(2013) requires a different

analysis. This is an important case, but it does not address the problem

of gerrymandering.

The problem of gerrymandering is difficult to resolve because

those who benefit most from it are not some special interest group,

but the very legislators who control the process. The defendants in

Page

note that the congressional map drawn in 2011 was accepted

by all of the congressional incumbents. Citizen pressure groups such

as the Virginia Redistricting Coalition do exist, but the paradox is

that citizen pressure groups’ main weapon is that they can threaten

legislators with possible failure to win reelection, while the reform

of the redistricting process would attack the best reelection insurance

incumbents have. Redistricting issues are complex and inherently

partisan, which can fracture citizen support for reform. If the

outcome of gerrymandering is the creation of democracy deficit,

then it becomes that much harder to pressure legislators, safe in their

uncompetitive, low-voter turnout districts. Reform is desirable, but

will only come through sustained pressure on those who control the

redistricting software.

Brian Turner is the Chair of the Political Science Department and a

professor at Randolph-Macon College.

Virginia's Democracy Deficit

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