Redistricting
For years, FairVote has highlighted how our nation's reliance upon winner-take-all elections and single member districts for Congressional elections without national standards has left our voting process open to the abuses of unfair partisan gerrymandering. Insiders for decades have known how powerful redistricting can be for elected officials to protect friends and undermine opponents. It's a blood sport that both parties have exploited, thereby minimizing the role of voters in the political process. By gerrymandering the districts, legislators and their political cronies have used redistricting to choose their voters, before voters have had the opportunity to choose them.
For the historical development of redistricting, see All About Redistricting.
FairVote Resources on Redistricting
The process of redistricting is highly partisan and often comes at the expense of voters. FairVote has developed a number of new resources regarding redistricting, including:
- Glossary - An A to Z guide to terms and definitions
- Litigation - A summary of ongoing lawsuits to redistricting plans and procedures throughout the country
- Reform Legislation - A report on proposed laws in all fifty states to improve redistricting processes
- Resource List - A guide and review of the best redistricting resources from around the web
- News - A compilation of tweets to news stories and opinion by state
- Alternative Approaches - Drawings of proposed "super districts" for all states used for proportional voting systems
- Additional Links - FairVote also contributes to Endgerrymandering.com and tweets current redistricting news
Redistricting encourages manipulation of our elections by allowing incumbent politicians to help partisan allies, hurt political enemies and choose their voters before the voters choose them. The current process is used as a means to further political goals by drawing boundaries to protect incumbents and reduce competition, rather than to ensure equal voting power and fair representation.
Solutions to the Redistricting Problem
FairVote encourages a number of short-term solutions such as national standards for transparency and public input, as well as replacing the partisan system with independent commissions at the state level. However, resolving the gerrymandering dilemma is only part of the problem. To achieve competitive elections, legislative diversity, and other public interest goals, fundamental change requires multimember districts with proportional voting. These reforms will help ensure all voters have choices and no strong prospective candidate is shut out of a chance to participate.
Read about other redistricting reform work and analysis from two coalitions backed by FairVote: Americans for Redistricting Reform and EndGerrymandering.com.
Redistricting Blog Posts
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January 9, 2012
Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for three cases pertaining to Texas redistricting. In recent decades, Texas has been unable to pass a congressional redistricting plan with paying a visit to the high court. With a redistricting process that forces partisan interests to battle racial minority communities for power over a district's single seat, there is little surprise regarding these recurring controversies.
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January 3, 2012
Though spared the controversies of congressional redistricting, winner-take-all rules still plague the seven at-large states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming). Nowhere are the shortcomings of our voting system more acute than in at-large winner-take-all races, where one individual is - rather astonishingly - responsible for representing the political and demographic diversity of an entire state. Read our latest critique of winner-take-all elections and our analysis of congressional elections in these at-large states.
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December 19, 2011
Lawmakers in Missouri have recently passed a congressional redistricting plan that gives Republican candidates a strong advantage in 6 of 8 seats and protects nearly all incumbents. There's a better way--fair voting systems in multi-seat "super-districts." Read the latest in our fair voting plan series.
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