How Michigan is an extreme example of gerrymandering

Eric Lupher | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption What is gerrymandering? We explain Free Press editorial board members Mike Thompson and Brian Dickerson explain gerrymandering and how it affects elections.

Most students of political science know the term “gerrymandering” characterizes the eccentric boundaries of many legislative districts, drawn to unfairly privilege one party over another. The name originated in an 1812 newspaper cartoon, a mash-up of Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry and salamander, which one district in particular was said to resemble.

Michigan has districts in shapes that even a flexible salamander would be incapable of contorting itself into. To be sure, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for some of these shapes. People have sorted themselves into Democratic-leaning voters in urban areas and Republican-leaning voters in rural areas. Accounting for these phenomena while complying with rules such as the Voting Rights Act necessitates districts that may sprawl out from our urban areas.

Doing the math

Modern metrics have been developed to determine when these districts qualify as gerrymandered for partisan reasons. In research by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, set to be released Tuesday, we were able to use those metrics to separate this natural sorting from political gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering leads to skewed maps that favor one party over another. As a result, elections in some districts are less competitive, exacerbating polarization and reducing the population that is responsible for electing candidates. The metrics were designed to measure the degree to which districts won by each party are equally competitive. The geographic sorting of people will cause some districts to favor one party or the other, but a balanced map will keep the state, as a whole, competitive. Michigan fails all three of these tests, including one called the efficiency gap, which calculates the frequency that a party “wastes” votes in a particular district.

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These may be confusing to the average voter, but they’ve become important as the U.S. Supreme Court leans toward establishing a legal standard for partisan gerrymandering to match the statistical analyses. Although the court sidestepped the issue in two recent cases, involving Wisconsin and Maryland, most legal experts believe that a landmark case will come before the court eventually, particularly as gerrymandering emerges as a front-burner issue around the country, and in Michigan.

The maps drawn by the Republican-dominated Legislature in 2011 left many Democrats wondering where their influence went. Michigan has two Democratic U.S. senators and voted twice for Barack Obama for president, but its state capital is dominated by Republican majorities in both houses. (While Donald Trump turned Michigan red in 2016, his margin was a slender 10,704 votes, in a race with two third-party candidates on the ballot.)

Michigan's skewed districts

We found Michigan’s legislative and congressional districts exhibit extreme values with the efficiency gap, which is suggestive of gerrymandering. In the original 2012 analysis by the academics who devised this measure, Michigan was one of seven states where congressional districts exceeded the proposed acceptable level, and one of 13 states where state house districts exceeded the recommended maximum efficiency gap. Michigan was one of only four states (along with Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio) where both legislative and congressional maps were graded as extreme.

The redistricting process affects the core components of how our representative democracy functions. It determines what candidates people are able to vote for and also who an elected representative represents. Gerrymandering enables the creation of “safe” districts that allow candidates to appeal only to their party base. Winners in primary elections, sometimes garnering the support of small percentages of the eligible voters, are assured of winning general elections. In this way, gerrymandering facilitates polarization.

Gerrymandering also erodes public trust in the political process. When groups feel the system is designed to limit their voice, or prevent them from electing candidates, it can lead to citizen disengagement and weaken the representational aspect of our governmental system.

Eric Lupher is president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan.