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Computer-Generated Redistricting
Posted by Steven Wu on Friday, June 18 @ 23:45:43 EDT Governance
I'm attending the 2004 American Constitution Society Convention this weekend. This morning there was an interesting panel on "Reframing Democracy: Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania and the Redistricting Battles." I wanted to just mention one thing that the panelists mentioned: the increasing use of computer software to redraw voting districts, and the implications thereof.

The panel featured an impressive list of notables:

Michael Carvin, Jones Day
Pamela Karlan, Professor of Law, Stanford University
Ellen Katz, Professor of Law, University of Michigan
Teresa Wynn Roseborough, Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan
Paul Smith, Jenner & Block

Almost every panelist at one point mentioned a piece of software that has become popular in state legislatures: Caliper's Maptitude for Redistricting, which the website advertises as:

a special edition of Caliper Corporation's Maptitude GIS for Windows that includes everything you need to build and analyze redistricting plans. As you assign area features to a district, the district boundaries are redrawn and selected attributes are automatically summarized to reflect the district's characteristics.
Basically, as one of the panelists put it today, Maptitude allows you to do just about anything you want with a redistricting plan, once you plug in the demographic data. You want districts that are as evenly balanced politically/racially/genderly as possible? How about a lot of majority-minority districts? How about districts that will protect incumbents, by filling them with people of the incumbents' political party? Whatever your preferences, Maptitude can generate the appropriate redistricting lines in half an hour or less.

Caliper isn't shy about the incredible number of states (and other entities) that use their software. But what are the implications of this software on redistricting? Basically, Maptitude takes the guesswork out of redistricting. A political party in charge of the state legislature can now, with a remarkable degree of precision ("within a single voter," one panelist said), redraw voting districts so that the districts include any set of voters that the political party wants. This historically unprecedented power is only enhanced by the latitude that states have been given to draw district lines: in Vieth v. Jubelirer, a 2004 Supreme Court decision, at least four justices clearly found the question of redistricting non-justiciable (meaning the federal courts will stay out of redistricting disputes altogether), and Justice Kennedy, who was in the middle of Vieth, doesn't look like he'll join the four dissenters any time soon.

Anyway, the panelists had a lot to say about redistricting in general, but I just wanted to throw out this point about the new technology of redistricting.

 
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Re: Computer-Generated Redistricting (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, June 24 @ 20:27:16 EDT
I was actually at the Supreme Court last December when they heard oral arguments in a case challenging redistricting in Pennsylvania.

Basically at present, if you could show that the redistricting plan concocted by local politicians systematically deprived certain groups of a meaningful vote, you could make a civil rights challenge to the plan in courts. But from the line of the justices' questions, it was pretty clear that there was at least one member on the panel who was interested in using the case to end court involvement in redistricting.

Scalia's questions showed his skepticism of judicial oversight for redistricting. But the concrete objections he was making didn't make sense. He kept asking the lawyer questions like, "But how could you possibly design a district so as to know the outcome... maybe somebody voted for Al Gore in 2000 but that doesn't mean they'll vote Democrat in 2004...?"

Well sure, you can't predict with certainty how any individual will vote based on their past record, but statistically, if you have good data on voting trends, it's a pretty simple matter to design a district that you expect to vote 60% your party. They actual vote might end up being 55% or 65%, but you can virtually guarantee the outcome of the election.

Justice Breyer was trying to help the lawyer out with prompting questions, like "Isn't it true that with computer technology today, it's possible to...." The scary thing is, Breyer's the youngest justice on the Court, and I got the distinct impression that he was the only one who had an understanding of the power of computer numbercrunching.

The Court has a huge generational disadvantage in appreciating the constitutional implications of rapidly-evolving technology, and this is just one example.


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Re: Computer-Generated Redistricting (Score: 1)
by emitetsaw on Wednesday, June 30 @ 14:02:12 EDT
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There is a great article in Dr. Dobbs Journal in the April 2004 issue where Brian Connolly wrote an article entitled "SQL, Genetic Programming, & Data Mining" where the article discusses the redistricting woes in Texas. It was/is an excellent article. I think that it would provide the basis for a wonderful and objective implementation for redistricting of states in an independent and unbiased manner. If I recall the article relied upon the 2000 census information. The source code for the implementation is freely available.


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