Redistricting

Abstract This chapter applies the alignment framework to redistricting. In a system of single-member districts, there may be no electoral policy with as much aligning—and misaligning—potential as the configuration of district boundaries. District maps determine how votes are aggregated and then converted into legislative seats. If district maps produce jurisdiction-wide partisan misalignment, that distortion extends to representation and policy. District maps also generally don’t need to produce jurisdiction-wide partisan misalignment. In most cases, the application of traditional criteria in a given political geographic context is compatible with unbiased plans. Accordingly, for courts concerned about alignment, there are few targets riper than highly skewed maps. Courts, however, aren’t the only relevant actors here. Misalignment from redistricting can also be curbed by the adoption of independent commissions and the use of criteria barring lines from being drawn with partisan intent and/or partisan effect. And vote aggregation isn’t the only mechanism through which redistricting affects alignment. When individual districts are designed pursuant to traditional criteria, voters know more about, and can mobilize more easily against, their legislators, who are thus induced to provide more congruent representation. For judicial and nonjudicial actors alike, then, the aligning ideal is an unbiased plan composed of districts conforming to traditional criteria.