What is the difference between gerrymandering and reapportionment

Understanding Redistricting. In most states, the legislatures enact redistricting plans, which are then submitted to the governor for approval or veto.

Other states use commissions to create redistricting plans. In some states, failure by the legislature to act can send responsibility for redistricting to a commission. Although laws and court decisions govern redistricting decisions, redistricting is a political process. It is particularly painful to congressional incumbents in states that have lost seats. Unless one or more incumbents retire, two incumbents are likely to face each other in a primary if they are of the same party, or in a general election if they are of opposing parties.

Even in states that gain seats, redistricting can be a problem for incumbents. Where a party controls both houses of the legislature and the governorship, it often uses this power to increase the likelihood of winning additional districts, both existing, albeit revised, and new.

In states with commission redistricting, there can be a sense of unpredictability and lack of influence by politicians over the outcome. And, the addition of districts due to reapportionment offers additional opportunities for drafting district lines to favor a party, a racial or ethnic group, a socioeconomic group, or another set of voters. In , Jeffersonian Republicans forced through the Massachusetts legislature a bill rearranging district lines to assure them an advantage in the upcoming senatorial elections.

Call it a Gerrymander. Gerrymandering: Crash Course Government and Politics The Constitution also limits the number of Representatives to no more than one for every 30, persons, provided that each state receives at least one Representative.

Additional parameters for the census and for apportionment have been established through federal statutes, including timelines for these processes; the number of seats in the House; and the method by which House seats are divided among states.

Congress began creating more permanent legislation by the early 20 th century to provide recurring procedures for the census and apportionment, rather than passing measures each decade to address an upcoming reapportionment cycle. Federal law related to the census process is found in Title 13 of the U.

Code , and two key statutes affecting apportionment today are the Permanent Apportionment Act of and the Apportionment Act of April 1 of a year ending in "0" marks the decennial census date and the start of the apportionment population counting process; the Secretary of Commerce must report the apportionment population of each state to the President by the end of that year.

Within the first week of the first regular session of the next Congress, the President transmits a statement to the House relaying state population information and the number of Representatives each state is entitled to. Each state receives one Representative, as required by the Constitution, and the remaining seats are distributed using a mathematical approach known as the method of equal proportions, as established by the Apportionment Act of Essentially, a ranked "priority list" is created that indicates which states will receive the 51 st th House seats, based on a calculation involving the population size of each state and the number of additional seats a state has received.

The U. After a census and apportionment are completed, state officials receive updated population information from the U.

Census Bureau and the state's allocation of House seats from the Clerk of the House. Single-member House districts are required by 2 U. Current federal parameters related to redistricting criteria generally address population equality and protections against discrimination for racial and language minority groups under the Voting Rights Act of VRA , as amended. Previous federal apportionment statutes have, at times, included other district criteria, such as geographic compactness or contiguity, and these standards have sometimes been referred to in U.

Supreme Court cases, but they are not included in the current federal statutes that address the apportionment process. These redistricting principles and others, such as considering existing political boundaries, preserving communities of interest, and promoting political competition, have been commonly used across states, and many are reflected in state laws today.

The procedural elements of redistricting are generally governed by state laws, and state redistricting practices can vary regarding the methods used for drawing districts, timeline for redistricting, and which actors e. Mapmakers must often make trade-offs between one redistricting consideration and others, and making these trade-offs can add an additional challenge to an already complicated task of ensuring "fair" representation for district residents. Despite technological advances that make it easier to design districts with increasing geographic and demographic precision, the overall task of redistricting remains complex and, in many instances, can be controversial.

A majority of states, for example, faced legal challenges to congressional district maps drawn following the census, and several cases remained pending in —less than a year before the next decennial census date. Every 10 years, the U. House of Representatives are readjusted to reflect the new population level and its distribution across states through the federal apportionment and state redistricting processes.

The requirement to have proportional representation in the House is found in the U. Constitution, and constitutional provisions also underlie other elements of the census, apportionment, and redistricting practices. Figure 1 provides a generalized timeline for how these three interrelated processes occur, and the sections of the report that follow provide additional information on apportionment and redistricting.

Figure 1. Timeline of Census, Apportionment, and Redistricting Process. Source: CRS compilation, based on information from the U. Constitution, U. Code , U. Census Bureau, and state laws. Apportionment or reapportionment refers to the process of dividing seats in the U. House of Representatives among the states. Article 1, Section 2, of the U. Constitution, as amended by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires that seats for Representatives are divided among states, based on the population size of each state.

House seats today are reallocated due to changes in state populations, since the number of U. The census reported a 9.

The map in Figure 2 illustrates changes in states' ideal district size and changes in the number of House seats allocated to each state between the and apportionments. Twelve U. House seats shifted across states following the census; 10 states lost seats and 8 states gained seats, distributed as shown in Table 1.

Table 2 provides additional historical data on the number of states and number of seats affected by each apportionment since Regional patterns of population change observed following previous censuses continued in , as the percentage of House seats distributed across the Northeast and Midwest regions decreased, and the percentage of House seats distributed across the South and West regions increased.

Figure 2. Source: CRS compilation of apportionment population data for and from the U. Census Bureau. Table 1. Loss or Gain of U. House Seats in States Following Census. Source: Kristen D. Table 2.

Scope of Apportionment Changes, Source: U. The apportionment was the first to include Hawaii and Alaska, which became states in The apportionment occurred with a House size of and 46 states. Two seats were added to the House once Arizona and New Mexico became states in The constitutional requirements for representation in the House based on state population size are provided in Article I, Section 2, as amended by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Article I, Section 2, requires that the national population be counted at least once every 10 years in order to distribute House seats across states. Broad parameters for the number of House Members are also contained in Article I, Section 2: there can be no more than one Representative for every 30, persons, provided that each state receives at least one Representative.

Federal statute establishes a number of other elements of the apportionment process, including how to count the population every 10 years via the decennial census; how many seats are in the House; how those House seats are divided across states; and certain related administrative details. In the 19 th century, Congress often passed measures each decade to address those factors, specifically for the next upcoming census and reapportionment. By the early 20 th century, however, Congress began to create legislation to standardize the process and apply it to all subsequent censuses and reapportionments, unless modified by later acts.

One example of such legislation was the permanent authorization of the U. Census Bureau in , 9 which helped establish a recurring decennial census process and timeline. Other legislation established the current number of House seats; 10 this number was first used following the census and subsequently became fixed under the Permanent Apportionment Act of The timeline for congressional reapportionment and current method for allocating seats among states were contained in the Apportionment Act of , which would then apply to every reapportionment cycle, beginning with the one following the census.

The apportionment steps detailed below are also summarized by the timeline in Figure 1. Under federal law, April 1 in any year ending in "0" marks the official decennial census date and the beginning of the population counting process.

Census Bureau calculates the apportionment population for the United States from the information it collects in the decennial census and certain administrative records. Under requirements in the Constitution, each state must receive at least one House Representative, and under statute, the current House size is set at seats.

The priority list rankings are calculated by taking each state's apportionment population from the most recent census, and multiplying it by a series of values. The multipliers used are the reciprocals of the geometric means between every pair of consecutive whole numbers, with those whole numbers representing House seats to be apportioned. See the Appendix for additional information on the method of equal proportions and other methods proposed or used in previous apportionments.

The President then transmits a statement to Congress showing 1 "the whole number of persons in each State," as determined by the decennial census and certain administrative records; and 2 the resulting number of Representatives each state would be entitled to under an apportionment, given the existing number of Representatives and using the method of equal proportions. The President submits this statement to Congress within the first week of the first regular session of the next Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "1".

Each state receives the number of Representatives noted in the President's statement for its House delegation, beginning at the start of the next session of Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "3". States may then engage in their own redistricting processes, which vary based on state laws. Federal law contains requirements for how apportionment changes will apply to states in the event that any congressional elections occur between a reapportionment and the completion of a state's redistricting process.

In these instances, states with the same number of House seats would use the existing congressional districts to elect Representatives; states with more seats than districts would elect a Representative for the "new" seat through an at-large election and use existing districts for the other seats; and states with fewer seats than districts would elect all Representatives through an at-large election.

Congressional redistricting involves creating or redrawing geographic boundaries for U. House districts within a state. Redistricting procedures are largely determined by state law and vary across states, but states must comply with certain parameters established by federal statute and court decisions. In general, there is variation among states regarding the practice of drawing districts and which decisionmakers are involved in the process.

Across states, there are some common standards and criteria for districts, some of which reflect values that are commonly thought of as traditional districting practices.

Districting criteria may result either from shared expectations and precedent regarding what districts should be like, or they may result from certain standards established by current federal statute and court decisions. These criteria typically reflect a goal of enabling "fair" representation for all residents, rather than allowing arbitrary, or discriminatory, map lines. Redistricting efforts intended to unfairly favor one group's interests over another's are commonly referred to as gerrymandering.

Packing describes district boundaries that are drawn to concentrate individuals who are thought to share similar voting behaviors into certain districts. Concentrating prospective voters with shared preferences can result in a large number of "wasted votes" for these districts, as their Representatives will often be elected by a supermajority that far exceeds the number of votes required for a candidate to win.

Cracking may be thought of as the opposite of packing, and occurs when individuals who are thought to share similar voting preferences are deliberately dispersed across a number of districts. This approach dilutes the voting strength of a group and can prevent its preferred candidates from receiving a majority of the vote in any district.

For some states, redistricting following an apportionment may be necessary to account for House seats gained or lost based on the most recent census population count. Some states might make additional changes to district boundaries in the years following an initial redistricting; in some instances, such changes are required by legal decisions finding that the initial districts were improperly drawn.

From time to time, Congress considers legislation that would affect apportionment and redistricting processes. The Constitution requires the apportionment of House seats across states based on population size, but it does not specify how those seats are to be distributed within each state.

Most redistricting practices are determined by state constitutions or statutes, although some parts of the redistricting process are affected by federal statute or judicial interpretations.

The current system of single-member districts rather than a general ticket system, where voters could select a slate of Representatives for an entire state is provided by 2 U. For example, in the s and early s, some federal apportionment statutes included other standards for congressional districts, such as population equality or geographic compactness. Many of the other federal parameters for congressional redistricting have resulted from judicial decisions.

One area of redistricting addressed by federal standards is population equality across districts. Legislative provisions, requiring that congressional districts "[contain] as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants," were found in federal apportionment acts between and Supreme Court has also addressed population size variance among congressional districts within a state, or malapportionment.

Under what is known as the "equality standard" or "one person, one vote" principle, the Court has found congressional districts within a state should be drawn to approximately equal population sizes. These equal population standards apply only to districts within a state, not to districts across states.

To illustrate how district population sizes can vary across states, Table 3 provides Census Bureau estimates from to for the average district population size nationwide, as well as estimates for which states had the largest and smallest average district population sizes. Wide variations in state populations and the U. Constitution's requirement of at least one House seat per state make it difficult to ensure equal district sizes across states, particularly if the size of the House is fixed.

Census, in order to account for the sizable population shifts that can occur within a year span. Table 3. Summary of Average U. House District Population Sizes, State had a single House district during the noted apportionment year. To assist states in drawing districts that have equal population sizes, the Census Bureau provides population tabulations for certain geographic areas identified by state officials, if requested, under the Census Redistricting Data Program, created by P.

Under the program, the Census Bureau is required to provide total population counts for small geographic areas; in practice, the Bureau also typically provides additional demographic information, such as race, ethnicity, and voting age population, to states.

One key statutory requirement for congressional districts comes from Section 2 of the VRA, as amended, which prohibits states or their political subdivisions from imposing any voting qualification, practice, or procedure that results in denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority.

In addition to requirements of population equality and compliance with the VRA, several other redistricting criteria are common across many states today, including compactness, contiguity, and observing political boundaries.

This is not an exercise in finger pointing because both major Parties in the U. If it did not matter where the district boundaries are drawn, a state would simply leave it to a staff member to draw lines as evenly divided throughout the state as possible according to population not area.

If it did not matter where the district boundaries are drawn, there would be no such thing as gerrymandering. By its definition, gerrymandering is manipulating district boundaries for political gain of one political party or another.

It does matter where the boundaries of districts within each state are drawn. It matters to the politicians in each state, and it is extremely important to the voters and citizens of each state — though most citizens are generally uninformed of this fact.

Where the boundaries of a district are drawn plays a big part in determining which political party is likely to prevail in every election , especially statewide and nationwide elections. When a particular political party is in power or in the majority, that party naturally wants to give its candidates every advantage so that the party can remain in power.

People who favor term limits should take this to heart. Once a party is in power, especially if they are in power right after a new census has been completed, that party will do everything to assure that the new district boundaries in their state will favor their own reelection as well the election of other politicians of their party.

Only the majority party can succeed with this plan, and as I explained earlier, both major U. Sometimes it is possible for the minority party to block efforts on the part of the majority party to redraw district boundaries entirely to their own advantage. That happens when the majority party does not have that big of a majority. It could be less depending on the circumstances at the time.

If conditions are right, the minority party may be able to force a filibuster to prevent the majority party from getting their way, at least for the duration of the filibuster. The filibuster has been used many times in the history of this country as well as by individual state legislatures to prevent passage of bills on all kinds of things.

In most states the legislature has the last word in where district boundaries are drawn. The majority party, or party in power, determines where those district boundaries will be, and they make every effort to guarantee their own advantage in being reelected and in electing more members of their own party. How do they do that?

They do that by making certain that the majority of voters in each district have a strong history of voting for members of their political party. We know how most states in the U. The reason a state is referred to as a red state or a blue state is because the majority of districts within that state can be depended on to vote Republican or Democrat.

By knowing that, we can often predict which states will vote for a particular presidential candidate. Even though it is not known which candidate a voter has cast his or her vote for, we still get a total of the results of which candidate s the majority of voters in a particular district voted for. If a district votes consistently for candidates of a particular party over a period of time, it is usually safe to predict they will continue to do so.

When district boundaries are redrawn, the party a particular district has consistently favored will attempt to keep that district as much in tact as possible, adding only a small percentage of new people to that district if need be, in order to keep the votes of people added to that district watered down, so to speak.

The opposition party will do exactly the opposite with the district described in the paragraph above. The opposition party will make every effort to divide that district, splitting portions of it up between other districts that have a history of consistently voting for the opposition party.

By doing that it is possible to neutralize the votes against them and keep their party in power for a long time. In addition to knowing which way most districts will vote by their voting history, there are telephone surveys taken on a regular basis around election dates, and in that case, it is possible to know how individual people will vote. They will not ask for your name, but they already have your phone number.

Telephone surveys are fairly expensive so that whoever funds them is likely to keep every piece of information gleaned from them in a file somewhere. It is not my intention to create paranoia here, but to simply point out how things really work as opposed to the way a lot of people seem to imagine they work. Most people look out for themselves first, and it is in the interest of politicians to know where their advantages lie.

The Republican and Democratic parties came to an agreement to gerrymander the boundaries. It was mutually decided that the status quo in terms of balance of power would be preserved.

With this goal, districts were assigned to voters in such a way that they were dominated by one or the other party, with few districts that could be considered competitive. In only a few cases did this require extremely convoluted boundaries, but [nevertheless] resulted in preservation of existing strongholds. Rarely does gerrymandering go the way it did in California in , but it usually does favor the majority party -- the party in power, whether that is the Republicans or the Democrats.

In , the parties in power were divided almost evenly in California, including Independents. The two parties resolved their dilemma by working together to all but guarantee each of them would be reelected in several elections to come.

Who says our political parties cannot work together? The most important thing to remember about who gets the advantage in gerrymandering is that it is NEVER the voters. It is always the Democrat or the Republican Party, as well as the benefit of sitting politicians here in the U. Even then, they did not concern themselves with what was best for their constituents. Lots of people have made suggestions about how gerrymandering could be avoided and some states are taking steps to improve the practice to benefit the voters of their states more, but for now things are as described here.

If you would like more information about how specific states do redistricting, click here. To learn more about how redistricting and gerrymandering work, watch the following short, but entertaining video. Currently, Texas is in the midst of a redistricting war of sorts. The state of Texas is dominated by Republicans.

Through gerrymandering, Republicans have attempted to water down minority votes by piecing out their neighborhoods and communities into larger Conservative stronghold districts. A process I described earlier in this document. They do not steal the entire vehicle, but remove parts of it and sell them. So voting districts are treated the same way. Divide and conquor. In the last census, Texas gained 4 million new citizens, mostly minorities that generally vote Democratic.

It was necessary to create 4 new districts to accommodate them. However Republicans drew the boundary lines of those districts so that their party would have the overwhelming advantage in 3 of them. The reason Texas and other Southern states must get approval from Washing D.

Peggy Woods, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this important issue. Gerrymandering is what enables politicians to hold a particular office for what may seem like eternity. People like Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein and many others stay in office, or conceivably could, until they literally die as a result of gerrymandering.

There are advantages to constituents in keeping the same people in a particular office for decades and there are also disadvantages. Personally, I think some fresh minds and ideas are a good thing every few years. Believe it was in June that the Supreme Court ruled that it had no authority to intervene regarding gerrymandering and how the majority Party had control and made decisions that could keep said Party in office possibly indefinitely.

Many of us had been hoping the Court would rule that it was unfair and therefore illegal. That didn't happen. It would seem to come down to Congress making changes that would be better for all voters, but I don't believe that is likely in the current political climate.

Republicans have most of the majorities and aren't inclined to give up their power. The practice of drawing district lines to the advantage of the Party in power has been going on for decades and both parties take advantage when they can. We need a nonpartisan committee to draw up the lines to be fair not particularly advantageous to either Party to the voters.

I understand the need to divide states into smaller areas to make many government policies and programs more convenient and easier to accomplish, but I don't believe voters should be divided up in a way that waters down their votes regardless of who they are inclined to vote for. Getting rid of gerrymandering and getting rid of the Electoral College seems to me to be two things that would benefit all voters equally, regardless of Party.

Both of these institutions can go against voters from either Party when conditions are right or wrong, if you prefer. They play a bigger influence on who our office holders will be than we the voters do, and that just isn't right. The Electoral College only effects presidential elections, but gerrymandering effects all elections from dog catcher to president and everything in between.

I agree with your last comment 16 months ago. Now that we have an impending Presidential election coming up again, this subject becomes once again of timely interest. One can only hope that something can eventually be done about gerrymandering and make the voting process fairer.

Peggy Woods, thank you for commenting on this article. It is a shame that gerrymandering can make it all but impossible to vote someone out of office and replace them with someone new. I really think ending gerrymandering would do far more to make the voting process fair than term limits ever could. I understand the importance of having districts, but I strongly dislike those districts being drawn along political lines. If they could be drawn by a non-partison committee good luck with that eh?

Sharing this once again because with the upcoming mid-term elections in the U. It is a shame that this is allowed to happen. The fix is in so-to-speak when one political party is in power. The only way around it is if people in huge numbers do not vote the way the politicians expect them to do. Liz Elias, thank you for sharing your views. Most of the time when we monitor elections in other countries, maybe all of the time, it is because we have been invited to do so.

The tamering with elections nowadays doesn't require a physical presence. It's all done with social networks and computers and most of the time targeted people or groups never even realize they are being manipulated. Lots of people imagine themselves to be immune to the messages planted where they will see them, but of course they flatter themselves. Manipulators aren't stupid. They know exactly how to manipulate people, and they tailor the manipulation to the person.

It doesn't take much effort to convince people who already hate somebody "just cuz" to hate them even more by planting stories that are lies from start to finish. The audience of these stories are already primed and ready to eat up the lies because they love to hate certain people. They are only too ready to believe anything negative about someone they have already decided to hate. Never mind that the facts are in complete opposition to the lies and the hatred.