pages/site/garden/gerrymandering/index.md

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<h1 class="p-name">Gerrymandering</h1>
<p>926 words, ~5 minute read. <span v-html="data[`site/${pageData.page.value.relativePath}`]" /></p>
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Gerrymandering, or the deliberate outlining of voting districts in order to consolidate or spread out voters who you expect to vote similarly to each other, is typically portrayed as an unambiguously unfair thing to do. And I (typically) agree! But there are some interesting caveats that illustrate how illusory our concept of fairness really is, that demonstrate it is in fact a [Social Construct](/garden/social-constructs/index.md). For example, Louisiana's most recent redistricting (in 2024) stirred up controversy for a new district, district 6, being drawn with very weird borders, specifically to ensure it has a majority of black voters who were previously more spread out across the districts. This is classic gerrymandering that makes it so that voting bloc determines the result of that district and the one already existing majority black district, but has nominal impact on any of the other 4 districts. But this process is actually being argued to be more fair to black voters, because previous congressional maps, despite appearing more fair, were not very proportional to race by only having 1 majority black district versus 5 majority white districts. This is the racial composition of Louisiana based on census data from 2017 to 2021, and the new congressional map highlighting the 2 districts that are majority black:

<div class="img-container"><img src="/garden/louisiana-population-by-race_1728740755664_0.jpeg" title="louisiana-population-by-race.jpeg"/></div>
Source: [Neilsberg](https://www.neilsberg.com/insights/topic/louisiana-population/)

<div class="img-container"><img src="/garden/LA-New-Cong-Map-1024x885_1728741341487_0.webp" title="LA-New-Cong-Map-1024x885.webp"/></div>
Source: [Democracy Docket](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/new-louisiana-congressional-map-with-two-majority-black-districts-heads-to-governor/)

Having 2 districts means black voters are represented by 1/3 of the districts, which is remarkably proportional, considering they make up 32% of the population. In this way, the gerrymandering is being employed to make the district representation more proportional by race, which groups like the NAACP argue makes them more fair. I agree with their assessment and think this will make Louisiana much more fair, and that's awesome. Naturally, it is being sued for its obvious gerrymandering however, with arguments that it is making the election less fair, under the definition that gerrymandering is intrinsically unfair.

Both sides of the argument are dealing with conflicting definitions of fairness. Determining it based on how close to square each district ends up is just as arbitrary as making them proportional by race. They could have been proportional by age or party or hobby. And in any case, 6 representatives means the proportions are going to be very crude proportions in anyways - the racial composition showed no other races reached the ~1/6 of a population required to be given a single representative, so is it "fair" that they don't get any representative of their own? And is it even fair to be treating racial demographics as a monolithic voting blocs in the first place? Sure those two districts are gerrymandered to be majority black, but what if they're also all the black voters that voted a specific way, and the ones who voted another way are the ones still spread out across the majority white districts?

These are not new insights, and [in](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/18/1194448925/congress-proportional-representation-explainer) [fact](https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/proportional-representation-reimagining-american-elections-to-combat-gerrymandering/) [many](https://protectdemocracy.org/work/proportional-representation-competitiveness/) [argue](https://fairvote.org/archives/how-proportional-representation-would-finally-solve-our-redistricting-and-gerrymandering-problems/) [that](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/proportional-representation-can-reduce-impact-gerrymandering) congressional districts should just use proportional representation directly, which would allow for larger districts with multiple representatives based on votes (such as a ranked choice vote, where you keep picking the most voted person, redistribute their votes to their next pick, and continue until all representatives picked), regardless of demographics or how anyone decided to draw up lines on a map... Except even then, what if the larger districts are still gerrymandered? What if the state itself is gerrymandered? Louisiana being composed of 32% black voters is "packed" considering the US as a whole only has a 12% black population. And unless we increase the number of representatives, there's likely still going to be demographics and political dispositions that lack even a single representative. But maybe some would argue below that 1 representative threshold, those demographics and political views aren't significant enough to warrant a material impact on how the area is run?

I've been mentioning race a lot here, but I think it's important to understand why that demographic specifically is considered so important to account for here. America is and has been a racist country for a long time, with many issues present in the system itself, and therefore our social constructs as well. Black people have been regularly under-represented in our government and suffered greatly for it. I've been making the case that proportionality by race is a reasonable metric for fairness, but to be honest there's quite a strong case that, due to historical oppression, black people may deserve to be _over-represented_ in order to help them regain equal footing in our society. To help correct the racist parts very much still present in our laws and processes, which may be hard to do if a minority of our representatives are chosen by black people. This adds a whole new facet to our discussion on fairness that I'm only briefly touching on here, but even proportionality may not be considered "fair", due to its ambivalence to historical context.

My personal stance on what would be most fair is actually that representation is intrinsically an inaccurate abstraction of the people's political will. I think the closer we get to having individuals voting directly on the issues the better (see [Direct Democracy](/garden/direct-democracy/index.md) ), and beyond that I'd ideally prefer a system where policies are workshopped and ideated upon until they can achieve a near unanimous vote before being implemented (see [Consensus Democracy](/garden/consensus-democracy/index.md) ). But hopefully all of this goes to show how complex fairness is, and how there is no "objectively" definition of fairness. Therefore, arguments should not center on appeals to "fairness" like its some objective or authoritative measure. You must be able to justify why your policy improves things in material. And to clarify, I _do_ support the new congressional map that makes two majority black voting districts - I'm all for harm reduction, and that map is the _least_ we can do in trying to make the system more fair, by most reasonable definitions of fairness.