Como funciona o Gerrymander

Na década de 1790, o fundador da América, Alexander Hamilton , disse que "o verdadeiro princípio de uma república é que o povo deve escolher quem quiser para governá-lo" [fonte: Whitaker ]. Essa declaração incorpora o que deveria ser um dos pontos fortes da democracia ao estilo americano – que todos os americanos são iguais e que cada cidadão tem voz igual nas urnas na escolha de seus representantes eleitos.

Mas isso não está acontecendo em Wisconsin, de acordo com os demandantes democratas em Gill v. Whitford, um caso ouvido pela Suprema Corte dos EUA em outubro de 2017. Eles argumentaram que os republicanos que controlam a legislatura daquele estado manipularam injustamente o sistema para manter o poder, embora os democratas tenham conquistado a maioria dos votos em todo o estado para a Assembleia, a câmara baixa da legislatura, nas últimas três eleições consecutivas [fonte: Wines (em inglês )].

Você pode estar se perguntando: mas como um partido pode conseguir a maioria dos assentos legislativos se não obtiver a maioria dos votos? Tudo o que é preciso é um pouco de gerrymandering . Esse é o truque político de manipular o tamanho e a forma dos distritos eleitorais, a fim de dar a um partido uma vantagem sobre sua oposição [fonte: Donnelly ].

O Gerrymandering remonta aos primórdios dos EUA e tem sido empregado ao longo dos anos para distorcer o processo político e impedir que os partidos da oposição desafiem os que estão no poder. Gerrymandering pode ocorrer em distritos legislativos estaduais, mas também pode ser usado para permitir que um partido domine a delegação do Congresso de um estado.

Um relatório de 2017 do Brennan Center for Justice calculou que nos 26 estados mais populosos que respondem por 85% dos distritos congressionais, os republicanos conseguiram 16 ou 17 assentos nas eleições parlamentares de 2016 devido ao viés partidário no processo de redistritamento. Essa é uma grande fatia das 24 cadeiras que os democratas precisariam mudar para ganhar o controle da Câmara nas eleições de 2018. O relatório também disse que quase todos os distritos gerrymandered residem em apenas sete estados: Michigan, Carolina do Norte, Pensilvânia, Flórida, Ohio, Texas e Virgínia [fonte: Royden e Li ].

Em junho de 2018, a Suprema Corte rejeitou Gill v. Whitford, dizendo que os demandantes não tinham legitimidade e não se pronunciou sobre os méritos do caso. O caso foi devolvido a um tribunal inferior [fonte: Associated Press ]. Se a Suprema Corte dos EUA tivesse sustentado uma decisão de primeira instância descartando o mapa legislativo de Wisconsin, isso teria causado ondas de choque na política americana, possivelmente invalidando esquemas de distritos em outros 20 estados também [fontes: Wines , Ellenberg ]. Embora o gerrymandering pareça destinado a subverter a democracia, os tribunais têm permitido isso ao longo dos anos, a menos que tenha sido usado para fins de discriminação racial.

Em junho de 2019, a Suprema Corte foi ainda mais longe e, em uma votação de 5 a 4 em linhas ideológicas ( Rucho vs. não deve duvidar das decisões dos legisladores.

Neste artigo, exploraremos a história do gerrymandering, por que ele se tornou tão prevalente e tão extremo e como interfere na oportunidade dos eleitores de serem representados de maneira justa no Congresso. Também veremos possíveis soluções para o problema. Mas primeiro, aqui está uma explicação básica de por que o gerrymandering pode ocorrer.

Conteúdo

1. Por que o Gerrymandering existe
2. As origens do Gerrymandering
3. Gerrymandering fica sofisticado
4. Gerrymandering é ruim para a democracia?
5. Distritos congressionais à prova de Gerrymander

Gerrymandering existe em parte porque tanto os distritos legislativos estaduais quanto os congressionais são redesenhados de vez em quando para que tenham um tamanho populacional uniforme e os votos de todos contam igualmente. O Artigo 1, Seção 2 da Constituição dos EUA , por exemplo, exige que a representação no Congresso seja dividida de acordo com a população a cada 10 anos, de acordo com os resultados do Censo dos EUA .

Pelo menos, é assim que deve funcionar.

O problema é que, na maioria dos estados, o processo é conduzido pelos próprios políticos partidários. E muitas vezes eles não conseguem resistir à tentação de desenhar distritos de maneira vantajosa para seus partidos. A ideia é fazer um partido desperdiçar votos - ou seja, lançá-los de uma forma que não os ajude a ganhar a maioria dos representantes, ou mesmo a quantidade que eles deveriam receber de acordo com sua porcentagem do eleitorado [fonte: Cameron ].

Imagine, para fins de ilustração, que um estado tenha apenas 500 eleitores – 200 do Partido Amarelo e 300 do Partido Laranja. Se o estado for dividido em cinco distritos de 100 eleitores cada, você pensaria que isso significaria que o Partido Laranja poderia ganhar três das cinco cadeiras. Mas se o Partido Amarelo está no poder há algum tempo, pode atrair distritos que minimizam a maior base eleitoral do Partido Laranja.

Uma maneira seria dividir o estado em distritos de formato estranho, dois dos quais são quase completamente eleitores de Orange. Os outros três teriam 60% de eleitores amarelos e 40% laranjas. O resultado é que muitos dos votos Orange acabam sendo desperdiçados. O Partido Amarelo também desperdiçaria alguns votos, mas ainda assim acabaria elegendo mais legisladores [fontes: Cameron , Petry ].

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor de direito da Universidade de Chicago, e Eric McGhee, pesquisador do Instituto de Políticas Públicas da Califórnia, chamam o número de votos desperdiçados de lacuna de eficiência [fonte: Petry ].

There are two main gerrymandering techniques. One is cracking, the practice of scattering an opposition party's political supporters across multiple districts, so that they don't form a majority in any of them. The other is packing, in which those partisans are jammed into a few districts (this was our Yellow and Orange Party illustration). Even though the opposition party wins overwhelmingly there, it still loses the majority of districts [source: Treleven].

Gerrymandering is a sneaky trick with a long and illustrious history, dating back to the beginnings of the nation. In 1788, shortly after Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution, founding father and former-governor Patrick Henry convinced state legislators to redraw the fifth congressional district in order to force his political foe James Madison to run against James Monroe, whom Henry figured would win. But Henry's scheme backfired when Madison came out on top anyway [source: Barasch].

It got only worse from there. In 1812, Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry did his part to help his party, the Democratic-Republicans, hang on to the state legislature. He signed into law a bill that created a strangely shaped district designed to make it tough for candidates of the rival Federalist Party to win. On the map, the district looked a bit like a salamander , and a newspaper cartoonist labeled it the "Gerry-mander." The name stuck [sources: Donnelly, Draper, Barasch].

Gerrymandering grew so common and blatant that Congress tried to control it with the Apportionment Act of 1842, which required, among other things, that congressional districts be drawn to be contiguous and compact as possible. But the temptation to use the map to political advantage was too tempting. In the 1880s, the Republican-controlled Congress even engaged in a sort of gerrymandering on a grand scale, carving out two separate states — North and South Dakota — in order to gain more seats in the U.S. Senate [source: Barasch].

Gerrymandering foi tão eficaz que tanto os republicanos quanto os democratas se envolveram nele. Na década de 1950, por exemplo, os legisladores democratas no Texas desenharam o que o escritor político Robert Draper chama de "mapas pronunciadamente racistas" para privar os afro-americanos e hispânicos de seu direito à representação.

Gerrymandering also flourished because for most of the nation's history, the federal courts didn't take much interest in it, deeming it a political rather than a constitutional problem, which voters could remedy simply by throwing out the party in power. (That view had an inherent flaw, since gerrymandering was intended to keep voters from doing that.) Finally, in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr that Constitutional challenges could be mounted to redistricting plans [sources: Whitaker, Utm.edu].

Additionally, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 set up rules to ensure that racial and ethnic minority voters weren't spread out in a way that diluted their political power [source: Barasch]. But efforts to draw maps that gave minorities more political influence sometimes led to even stranger configurations. In the 1990s, for example, North Carolina legislators drew up a congressional district that snaked narrowly across the state in order to pick up pockets of African-American voters [source: Wattson].

That map was thrown out in 1996 when the Supreme Court ruled that even districts drawn to be fair to minority voters should maintain "compactness, contiguity and respect for political subdivisions" [source: Draper].

But up until now, the Supreme Court has yet to agree upon a legal standard that would make it clear when redistricting maps are unconstitutional. The Wisconsin case could change that [source: Fritze].

Because of its long history, gerrymandering conjures up an image of old-school political bosses gathering in smoke-filled rooms to twist arms and dicker over who gets which precincts, as they draw the borders of districts on paper.

But those days are long gone. Redistricting has become a technologically complex affair, shaped by political consultants who roam the country and guide state legislators in redrawing political maps with the help of sophisticated software that processes population data to draw and tinker with hypothetical maps [source: Draper].

Para os críticos do gerrymandering, o mapa legislativo do estado de Wisconsin que está sendo revisado pela Suprema Corte dos EUA em Gill v. Whitford é um excelente exemplo de como a tecnologia tornou as coisas ainda piores. Como o professor de matemática da Universidade de Wisconsin, Jordan Ellenberg, detalhou em um artigo de opinião do New York Times , depois que os republicanos ganharam o controle da câmara estadual de Wisconsin nas eleições de 2010, eles usaram algoritmos de computador para testar como vários mapas legislativos possíveis se comportariam em cenários eleitorais futuros. O resultado, segundo Ellenberg, foi um mapa "projetado com precisão para assegurar o controle republicano em todas as circunstâncias, exceto nas mais extremas".

The Wisconsin map is designed so ingeniously that if the proportion of Democratic votes rises above 50 to 52 percent, it actually becomes even more skewed toward the Republicans [source: Hershlag, Ravier and Mattingly]. In order to wrest away control of the Assembly, Democrats would have to defeat Republicans at the polls by a statewide margin of eight to 10 points — hardly doable in state split evenly between the two major parties [source: Ellenberg].

But high-powered computing and intricate math work both ways. While political map-makers can use those tools to create maps with the maximum amount of unfairness, it's also possible for political scientists and mathematicians to use the same tools to show that a gerrymandered map is a true outlier — that is, one that's so far outside the ordinary, it was obviously drawn up just to create a partisan advantage.

Prison Gerrymandering

Lawmakers in certain states have counted prison populations as part of their redistricting efforts even though the prisoners themselves are not eligible to vote. This gives rural, predominantly white districts more clout than they would have had otherwise. (One ward in Iowa had 1,400 residents, 1,300 of whom were prisoners.) The practice has been ruled unconstitutional in several states [source: New York Times)

To a degree, whether gerrymandering is bad for democracy probably depends upon if you're in the party that's clinging to power, or the opposition that is struggling to wrest it away.

But it's hard to argue that gerrymandering hasn't distorted the political system and sometimes led to political representation that doesn't really reflect the voters' views. North Carolina, for example, has evolved over the years from a deep red state into a swing state that Barack Obama won in 2008, and Mitt Romney and Donald J. Trump only won narrowly in the two elections that followed. But you wouldn't know that from the state's Congressional delegation. In 2012, for example, 51 percent of North Carolina voters cast ballots for Democratic Congressional candidates. Yet because of gerrymandering, Republicans won nine of the state's 13 seats [source: Savage].

But even some politicians whose parties have benefited from gerrymandering have come to recognize that it undermines the integrity of the American political process.

In Maryland, for example, former Gov. Martin O'Malley has admitted that when he presided over the re-drawing of the state's congressional districts in the early 2010s, he was convinced that Democrats should use their power to pass a map that gave them an advantage in winning elections. Map-drawing tricks enabled the Democrats to oust a longtime Republican incumbent, Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, in a 2012 race [source: Hicks, Savage].

Maryland is a deep blue state — Hillary Clinton won 60 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election, for example — and the state's voters actually approved the Democratic-drawn map in a 2012 referendum. Nevertheless, since then, O'Malley — who left office in 2015 and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for president in 2016 — has changed his mind. In a 2017 speech at Boston College, he called for an end to the gerrymandering of congressional districts, saying that it's led to a political climate in which divisiveness and extremism have paralyzed government.

"Gone from the Congress of today are the Rockefeller Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats," O'Malley explained, citing two groups of moderates who've become virtually extinct. "Instead, we've fostered a system that drives our representatives apart, a system that has wiped out diversity of opinions."

Advocates of reforming the political process say that there's a way to eliminate gerrymandering and make elections fairer. They'd like to take control of the legislative and congressional redistricting process away from elected politicians whose parties stand to benefit from drawing skewed maps. Instead, they want states to turn redistricting over to independent, non-partisan commissions.

It's an idea that sounds promising, at least in theory. But so far, only six states — California, Arizona, Washington, Idaho, New Jersey and Hawaii —give complete control over congressional redistricting to commissions, whose maps don't need final approval from state legislators or governors. And as Vox journalist Andrew Prokop noted in a recent article, simply setting up a commission doesn't keep politics out of the process, because the political leaders get to decide who's on the commission, and seats are reserved for Democratic and Republican appointees — though some states also reserve seats for independents or non-partisan commissioners.

So far, there's mixed evidence on whether commissions can open up the political process and reduce unfairness. In California, for example, a referendum turned congressional redistricting over to a commission in 2010. But since then there hasn't been that much change in the partisan make up of California's congressional delegation. In 2016, for example, all the state's 53 congressional districts were won by the party that previously controlled them. But the new map has led to more races being competitive. One example: Longtime Republican incumbent. Rep. Darrell Issa, who won 63 percent of the vote in 2010, squeaked by in 2016 with a margin of less than 1 percent [source: Blake].

But Americans also can look to the north for an example of how commissions can make politics fairer. In 1964, Canada — where extreme gerrymandering once was common — passed a law that set up a three-member commission to draw up electoral districts for each province, with a superior court judge — a non-elected official — as the chairperson. The other two members are either political science professors affiliated with universities, or else retired government officials. Members of Parliament are allowed to raise concerns about the draft versions of the maps, but the commission's decision is final. The population of each electoral district must correspond with the province's electoral quota as much as possible [source: Courtney].

As legal scholar Charles Paul Hoffman has written in the Manitoba Law Journal: "The commissions have been largely successful since their implementation." As a result, Canada has morphed into a country where people might still complain about their elected officials, but the make up of districts is no longer a source of bitter controversy.

Author's Note: How Gerrymandering Works

I've been interested in this subject since I covered the Congressional redistricting process in Maryland in the early 1990s, and got to see the sometimes-bitter disputes over the boundaries of districts. Back then, the big innovation was being able to draw multiple versions of the map on a computer and print them on paper.

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