New voting districts, the citizens’ way

For more than a few years, democracy watchdogs have expressed concern about the United States. The Economist Intelligence Unit, for instance, ranks the U.S. as a “flawed democracy.” Much of the concern is over the fairness of the voting process itself, such as access to voting and who verifies ballot counts.

Yet this focus misses a significant measure of civic renewal on another key aspect: the task of defining the community of voters who elect each legislator. As states finish up redrawing maps for new voting districts based on the latest census data, American democracy is functioning robustly in exactly the way it was designed to do.

Citizens are engaging in the once-opaque process with unprecedented intensity. Courts are rejecting grossly partisan maps. Politicians, voters, and judges are engaged in vigorous debates about what fairness means.

“We’re back to the principle of people should pick their politicians, rather than the politicians picking their people,” Jack Young, a redistricting committee co-chair of the League of Women Voters in Delaware, told the Delaware State News.

Redistricting bundles voters and communities together for elections based on new population data every decade. For most of America’s history, the process was carried out almost exclusively by state and local politicians and subject to a highly partisan process known as gerrymandering. The party in the majority drew new maps based on voting records to lock in an advantage at the ballot box.

Over a couple of decades, many citizens have been trying to pry the process out of the legislators’ hands. This year they may finally be getting some leverage. In 2000, according to data compiled by Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, congressional districts were redrawn by legislators in 27 states. This year, that number has dropped to 20. The change reflects a shift in favor of independent commissions, courts, and citizen oversight.

In 2018, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a minimum threshold for bipartisan support of new district maps. For the second time, the Supreme Court of Ohio rejected a map this month proposed by the legislature for failing to meet the new requirement. Across the country, scores of old and new civil society groups are forcing reviews of maps down to the county level that carve up communities into multiple districts.

At the local level, for example, city officials in Hendersonville, Tennessee, adopted a redistricting plan drawn by a citizen committee rather than their own. The plan will require three current aldermen to face new constituencies if they decide to seek reelection. The city plan would have preserved their districts. 

That pushback reflects a deeper search for how to ensure that each person’s vote is equally valued. Defending such equality in the democratic process, says U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia in a recent interview with NPR, is “really about the dignity of everybody’s humanity and our ability to build a future that embraces all of us.”

As states redraw their districts in time for the coming primary elections, the ongoing challenges show that attempts by one party or the other to lock in unfair advantages have not ended. But democracy is finding renewal in scores of citizen-led efforts to participate in how elections are shaped and fairness is defined.