The Effects of Non-Legislative Approaches to Redistricting on Competition in Congressional Elections

Abstract

Growing concern over gerrymandering has led some states to transfer redistricting responsibility from legislatures to commissions, boards, or other less overtly partisan bodies. These transfers in redistricting responsibility offer scholars an opportunity to study the impact of redistricting processes on elections. This study, focusing on congressional elections for the years 1982-2008, suggests that nonlegislative methods of redistricting encouraged strong, well-financed challengers to step forward, and decreased the likelihood that incumbents would run unopposed. The data, however, do not show that non-legislative redistricting either reduced the typical margins of incumbents' victories or increased the likelihood that incumbents would lose. In fact, the data sometimes run contrary to expectations. This raises questions about the common contention (especially by reformers) that nonlegislative approaches (NLA) will promote turnover of elected officials. The benefits of non-legislative redistricting depend both on the types of outcomes that are desired, and on the specific NLA that is adopted. Polity (2012) 44, 32-50.

The Mask of Neutrality: Judicial Partisan Calculation and Legislative Redistricting

“…To my knowledge, no scholar has examined whether the margin of victory in congressional elections is associated with judicial redistricting over so long a time period, nor has any scholar theorized that judicial partisan calculation of the sort I describe-in which judges deliberately target districts held by contrapartisans for increased electoral competition-leads to systematically different outcomes in legislative elections. I find that judicial redistricting plans have resulted in more competitive elections than plans drawn by state legislatures and non-independent commissions (consistent with Cottrill andPeretti 2013 andWilliamson 2014). Further, I find that since judges may rightly be seen as actors in or attendant to a political regime and as doing the bidding of their preferred partisan coalitions, judges drawing districts appear to advance the electoral interests of their copartisan candidates for Congress (consistent with the extant literature on judicial partisanship and election litigation [e.g., Lloyd 1995;Kopko 2015;Peretti 2016]).…”

“…Studies have also suggested that independent commissions and courts should consider nonpartisan considerations that are intended to enhance electoral competition such as district compactness, responsiveness, and accountability (Butler and Cain 1992;Hirsch 2003). Other research has shown that districts shaped by commissions and courts (i.e., through nonlegislative redistricting) experience more competitive elections than those that undergo redistricting conducted by partisan state legislatures (Carson and Crespin 2004;Grose 2011;Cottrill 2012;Cottrill and Peretti 2013;Lindgren and Southwell 2013;Carson, Crespin, and Williamson 2014). No empirical relationship has been demonstrated between the partisanship of judges and electoral rewards for those judges' copartisans in congressional elections (at least from 2002 to 2010) (Cottrill and Peretti 2013), but some isolated , 1982-2012. nonpartisan plans commissioned by judges have seemed to reflect demonstrable copartisan bias (Kousser 1996).…”

Gerrymandering from the Bench? The Electoral Consequences of Judicial Redistricting

“…The Previous Margin of Victory in the preceding election is expected to have a positive effect on the vote percentage in the current election; it should, thus, be inversely related to our dependent 8 We recognize that there are some important differences in the impact of each approach on competition, but a detailed treatment of those differences is beyond the scope of the present study. For analysis of the effect of commission type on electoral competition, see Cottrill (2012). 9 These states are Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington.…”

A Computational Approach to Measuring Vote Elasticity and Competitiveness

“…Our analysis does not model the impacts of whether the lines are drawn by legislatures, courts, or commissions. Several groups of political scientists have studied the relationship between the identity of the line-drawers and the degree of competitiveness in subsequent elections (Carson and Crespin 2004;Grainger 2010;Cottrill 2012;Miller and Grofman 2013; Henderson, Hamel, and Goldzimer 2018), with mixed conclusions.…”