User:Numberguy6/Racial gerrymandering in the United States

Racial gerrymandering is a pervasive issue in the United States. There have been some attempts at significant electoral reform, but none have been successful.

Background and statistics
Gerrymandering is the act of drawing electoral districts to give an advantage to a specific political party or demographic group. There are two major techniques used in gerrymandering: packing, where a district contains as many voters from a political or demographic group as possible; and cracking, where a certain group is split between districts to ensure that the opposing group has a slight edge in all of them. Gerrymandering has a long history in the United States; however, partisan gerrymandering is far more visible, as racial gerrymandering is done by both parties and is therefore not a partisan political issue.

The term "gerrymander" was first used in 1812 to refer to an electoral district in Massachusetts by Governor Elbridge Gerry. Racial gerrymandering became visible with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which vastly improved minority voter registration and turnout and therefore significantly increased the collective voting power of minorities. The Voting Rights Act created significant incentives for governments to introduce affirmative (benefitting minority voters) racial gerrymandering. However, some argue that this benefitted minority politicians at the expense of minority voters, because it produced White stronghold districts. The legality of affirmative racial gerrymandering has also been questioned numerous times, and courts have usually ruled against it. These factors have caused the usage of affirmative racial gerrymandering to be massively reduced.

The usage of gerrymandering experienced a large increase after the 2010 Census, due to the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP), which was a partisan gerrymandering effort utilizing both packing and cracking that intentionally gave the Republican Party a significant advantage in the House of Representatives. This project was officially race-neutral, but indirectly hurt minority voters, as Republican voters are almost entirely White and rural.

Large-scale electoral reform in Italy that included a switch to proportional representation in national parliamentary elections has been found to significantly reduce corruption. However, large-scale electoral reform remains rare in established democracies, especially in the United States; this is because there is less public awareness, as the issues are more complex and less visible to the majority of voters.

Electoral reform is not a high-priority issue among voters in the United States, with only 2% of respondents to an October 2020 Gallup poll believing it to be "the most important problem facing the country today".

Although a complete overhaul of the electoral system would be most effective at ending racial gerrymandering, it is possible for smaller-scale electoral reform to reduce the problem of gerrymandering.

Prisons
In addition to the direct impacts of racial gerrymandering, another contributing factor is the inclusion of prisons in census counts despite minorities being significantly overrepresented in prison populations. Maine and Vermont are the only states that allow prisoners to vote, and both of them have 90%+ White populations. Prisoners increase the population count for the areas that they are based in (which are usually heavily White and rural), which gives the enfranchised residents more voting power at the expense of the imprisoned residents.

Impact
Racial gerrymandering has been widely compared to segregation and criticized for reducing politicians' incentives to create multiracial governing coalitions, as they do not need support from all races to win elections. This underrepresentation of demographic groups in legislative bodies in turn creates an underrepresentation of political issues that affect these demographic groups.

Another major impact is that the perpetrators of racial gerrymandering feel empowered to enact other forms of voter suppression, as voters will not be able to vote them out of office. These forms of voter suppression include voter ID laws, polling place closures, and relocation of polling places to locations that make minority voters uncomfortable, such as a site of historic racial discrimination in Sunset, Louisiana. This further compounds the underrepresentation of political issues that affect minorities.

Attempts at reform
Most attempts at reforming focus on reforming the districting and electoral processes as opposed to simply putting different people in charge of districting.

Alternative districting methods
Bipartisan or independent commissions are currently used in Arizona, California, Idaho, Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington to draw congressional districts, in contrast to the rest of the states, where districts are drawn by the state legislatures. Commissions are appointed by the executive branch of the state government, with some oversight from the legislative branch. Commissions have been praised for not giving an advantage to a specific party.

Bipartisan commissions have been criticized for giving an unfair advantage to establishment politicians on both sides.

Independent commissions have been criticized for having members that are independent in name only and actually support a specific party.

According to a December 2018 opinion poll, 62% of voters support the creation of independent redistricting commissions, compared to 19% who oppose. These results do not have significant racial or partisan variation.

The usage of math and artificial intelligence has also been proposed. Due to being beyond human control, it does not have the same disadvantages that state legislatures or commissions have. However, there would have to be some human oversight to decide on the algorithm that would be used.

Alternative voting systems
Proportional representation (PR) in electoral systems ensures that legislative seats are distributed proportionally to the vote share received by candidates or parties. PR almost completely eliminates the effects of gerrymandering by making it impossible to "crack" voters between districts (as those voters would receive representation based on the percentage of the electorate that they comprise). PR is used for nationwide elections in most of Europe and Latin America, and has not been found to have any major negative consequences.

PR has been proposed in the United States, but has not been implemented in any jurisdictions, due to a lack of public awareness.

Out of all of the forms of PR, party-list proportional representation is the most effective at ending gerrymandering, as it completely abolishes electoral districts. However, single transferable vote (STV) has several additional advantages, such as allowing local and voter-chosen (as opposed to party-chosen) candidates, and allowing independent candidates to run. STV therefore solves not only the problem of traditional racial and partisan gerrymandering, but also the problems of bipartisan and independent commissions. STV requires virtually no overarching human oversight, which makes it almost completely immune to exploitation. Overall, STV is the most advantageous solution to the problem of racial and partisan gerrymandering.