Maryland takes Gerrymandering to next level

[Phantasee]

Analysis: 30% solution creates monstrous 3rd District

October 05, 2011


By Len Lazarick
Len@MarylandReporter.com

The first highlight the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Committee touted about the congressional district plan it officially released Tuesday was that “more than 70% of Marylanders will remain in their current Congressional district.”

That means something like 30% of the people — almost a third of the state — will be moved into new districts. This is reputedly to “reflect population changes over the past decade reflected in the Census.”

But the odd thing is that Maryland’s population in the past decade grew by only 9%. According to data the state Department of Planning prepared as the process began, six of the eight congressional districts were within plus or minus 3% of the ideal size of 721,529. Rep. Steny Hoyer’s 5th Congressional District, due to hot growth in southern Maryland, was 6.5% over (49,000 people), and Elijah Cummings’ 7th was 8% under (57,000 people) due to city population loss.

Overall, according to the Planning Department, a total of 174,000 Marylanders needed to be shifted around to make the current districts come out even.

Instead what the committee proposed shifts almost 10 times that number — 1.7 million people — if the committee’s 30% figure is accurate. In a statement yesterday, Gov. Martin O’Malley said, “It is my intention to introduce a map that is substantially similar to the map submitted by the committee.”

Why so much change when so little was needed? The committee’s narrative doesn’t help very much.

In Harford and Prince George’s counties, the number of districts was reduced from three to two – “a desire expressed by residents,” said the committee, and “consistent with public testimony.” CORRECTED: But in Anne Arundel County, where residents pleaded to get back the resident member of Congress that they had for decades or to be placed in at most two districts, the committee kept the Republican county split into four. It gets Democrat Donna Edwards and loses Republican Andy Harris. three (rather than the current four).,

Throughout the commentary, the committee notes the importance of the U.S. House members representing the interest of federal facilities in their districts. But isn’t that something of a pork barrel formulation? Members of Congress are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents, which may not coincide with the military and government institutions nearby.

3rd District map is missing

The most telling feature of the committee’s explanation is what it fails to say and show about the 3rd Congressional District. That district was one of the most gerrymandered 10 years ago, when a majority of it was shifted to Anne Arundel County, forcing then-Rep. Ben Cardin to campaign where he was not well known before. (That exercise may have helped him in the long run to win his Senate seat.)

The committee has posted eight maps on its Planning Department site. None of them show the 3rd District in full. As best we can on short notice, we’ve put together a map of what that district looks like. Yikes, you might say. What kind of monster is it?

The district drawn by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 that a cartoonist said looked like a salamander is compact and rational compared to the ink blot that is the committee’s 3rd District.

In the north, it starts in Owings Mills and dips down into Baltimore. Then it creeps almost invisibly along the city line out to Parkville, and slinks back along the city line to East Baltimore, then southwest through Lansdowne into Elkridge, Columbia and Fulton (mostly as it does now). Then it takes a new grand leap across the Patuxent River into Olney and Burtonsville, almost driving down to Silver Spring.

But we must not forget the tentacle that lopes along the Patuxent, heads north into Severn and Glen Burnie, then out to the old black resort of Riveria Beach on the Chesapeake Bay and south to the gated community of Gibson Island. Poor Congressman John Sarbanes will have to take out his kayak and cross the Magothy River into Arnold, then make portage to the Severn River where at last he lands in Annapolis. Whew! Hope he has a GPS device.

The committee’s explanation of this meandering is one brief sentence: “Congressional District 3 remains a Central Maryland district that incorporates portions of the Baltimore and suburban Washington regions.”

Surely someone can do better than that. Whatever the committee’s plans might be in trying to unseat Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, at least his current 6th District is compact and contiguous.


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Can someone give me a good reason for why electoral districts are done up by people with such an obvious self-interest in the outcome?

[Simon_Jester]

Because it's one hell of an uphill battle to stop them doing it, because they can do it in the first place.

But yeah, I would *love* to see a law mandating... oh, I dunno. One easy way to beat gerrymandering would be to place limits on the ratio between the area covered by a district and the length of its border. You wouldn't be able to give them long tendrils or protrusions like that, at least.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I love the suggestion. It's just mathematically obscure enough that legislators won't catch on without assistance. Unfortunately, they may have ready access to expert assistance.

[TC Pilot]

A few states (Iowa, Arizona, and Florida) have an independent redistricting process, but (I think) they all still have to be approved by the legislatures. None of them seem to have any really egregious districts like the one in the OP's map (if you want to see another hilariously unsubtle example, check out the Illinois 4th). Even then, you'll still have problems like, say, what's going on in Illinois right now: two pairs of Republican districts have been merged together by a Democratic majority legislature.

Like Simon_Jester said, it would take a lot of effort to curtail gerrymandering, since the authority to change the process rests in the hands of the people who have the most reason to control it, and I suspect a lot of voters would actually prefer it to remain the same, since the entire point of gerrymandering is to give the politician (and by extension his political party and his/it's supporters) more power.

[D.Turtle]

Can someone give me a good reason for why electoral districts are done up by people with such an obvious self-interest in the outcome?

Not a good one, but a short and accurate one:
The people in power are the people who decide the rules of how to get into power. Why would they want to change that?

[Lonestar]

Can someone give me a good reason for why electoral districts are done up by people with such an obvious self-interest in the outcome?

It's actually written into the Virginian Constitution that Districts must be "compact and uniform", which has caused our current (Republican) governor to piss off the GOP by saying he would veto proposed redistricting that would basically do the same in Virginia as to what's going on in MD(except to prevent Dems from gaining seats rather than the other way around).


So, YMMV between the states.

[Questor]

A few states (Iowa, Arizona, and Florida) have an independent redistricting process, but (I think) they all still have to be approved by the legislatures.

California's actually bypasses the legislature, but its now being challenged in court by the legislators that will have trouble running in their new, less gerrymandered, districts.

[bobalot]

In Australia, the Australian Electoral Commission (a completely independent body) draws up boundaries between electorates on a Federal level. Each state has its own electoral commission for their own state parliaments. Americans should consider adopting a similar system.

[Coalition]

Would the following work:
Take the square root of the area of a district. Triple that. No points on the border of the district may exceed that distance in a straight line.

As to the district, that is an impressive performance.

I'd like to know why they can't just plop district borders down like bricks. Take the city's population, divide that by the number of districts desired, and split the population into those districts, limiting the width/length as above. It's probably something obvious that I have missed.

[Thanas]

Hooray for having one party in power for several decades.

[houser2112]

Aside from how tentacle-like that 3rd district is, don't districts at least have to be contiguous?

[Phantasee]

It looks to me like it is, but the scale of the map doesn't show the very thin connections. Also, there would be a border over the water for that bit that's separated on the south east corner.

[Simon_Jester]

Hooray for having one party in power for several decades.

The Democrats will be in power in Maryland pretty much no matter how the state gets redistricted, Thanas; demographics will tell. It's mostly a question of whether, out of the ten representatives the state gets, there are about three Republicans, or about one, or possibly about zero.

[Thanas]

The Democrats will be in power in Maryland pretty much no matter how the state gets redistricted, Thanas; demographics will tell. It's mostly a question of whether, out of the ten representatives the state gets, there are about three Republicans, or about one, or possibly about zero.

You must think me completely ignorant about Maryland to interpret my post to be about the future instead of the past.

[Lonestar]

The Democrats will be in power in Maryland pretty much no matter how the state gets redistricted, Thanas; demographics will tell. It's mostly a question of whether, out of the ten representatives the state gets, there are about three Republicans, or about one, or possibly about zero.

The current redistricting is basically going to eliminate GOP districts. It's really lol-worthy when the Western half(like Hagerstown west) of the state is being divied up to have parts of their districts in Monegomery County.

I know there are some people on the board who only care about redistricting when it happens to their political party, but it should be worriesome for everyone.

[Eldy]

I know there are some people on the board who only care about redistricting when it happens to their political party, but it should be worriesome for everyone.

I live in Maryland's 3rd district and I've been disgusted with how obviously gerrymandered the thing is for years. The 2000 Census-era district map is at least as bad as the new one. I don't see much chance of Maryland having a healthy opposition party and I agree that this is a bad thing, even though I'm hardly a fan of the GOP.