Ground War

Ground War tackles the controversies, litigation, and effects surrounding partisan gerrymandering of the U.S. Congress. The book argues that nonpartisan commissions, not courts, are best equipped to address the issues presented by gerrymandering. It illustrates how existing measures and legal standards are too narrow, being well-adapted to evaluating maps in swing states in close elections but failing to adapt to states or national electoral environments favoring one party. The book demonstrates that the bias and responsiveness of partisan maps are highly sensitive to both the makeup of a state’s electorate and the ephemeral election conditions under which individual elections take place. Therefore efforts to convince courts to adopt legal standards based on any such existing measures are misguided. The book makes its argument through multiple empirical approaches. First, it shows how competition and responsiveness have varied in actual elections as a function of the map-drawing party in interaction with national electoral tides in counterintuitive ways. Second, it uses new measurement techniques to simulate recent maps under a broad range of electoral conditions, revealing differences under varied redistricting regimes and partisan tides and wide variation in the magnitude of bias and responsiveness of partisan gerrymanders. But this does not mean that partisan gerrymandering must be excused as a dilemma without a reasonable remedy. Instead, Ground War argues that nonpartisan commissions, adopted state by state, represent the best alternative to legislative districting, presenting evidence that such commissions foster competitive elections, produce unbiased delegations, and give consideration to representational claims distinctive to each state.