The Indiana General Assembly is preparing to embark upon what individual legislators call redistricting, and what the rest of us call gerrymandering. It will be an intensely partisan endeavor.

The goal of this exercise is to draw as many “safe” seats as possible—more for the party in charge, of course, but also for the minority party, because in order to retain control, the majority needs to cram as many of the minority into as few districts as possible. While gerrymandering is nothing new, the advent of computers has made the process efficient beyond the wildest dreams of Elbridge Gerry, the former Vice-President for whom it is named.

In gerrymandering, neighborhoods, cities, towns, townships—even precincts—are broken up to meet the political needs of mapmakers. Numbers are what drive the results—not compactness of districts, not communities of interest, and certainly not competitiveness.

Safe districts undermine the democratic process.

• If one is guaranteed victory, it is easy to become lazy and arrogant, safe to scuttle popular measures without fear of retribution.
• Lack of competitiveness can make it impossible to trace campaign contributions. When the folks with “Family Friendly Libraries” send a check to Representative Censor, who is unopposed, he then sends it to Senator MeToo, who is in a hot race.  Senator MeToo’s campaign report shows only a contribution from Rep. Censor.
• Lack of competitiveness breeds voter apathy. Why get involved when the result is foreordained?  Why donate to a sure loser? For that matter, unless you are trying to buy political influence, why donate to a sure winner? Why volunteer or vote, when those efforts won’t affect the results?  It’s not only voters who lack incentives for participation, either; it’s not easy to recruit credible candidates to run on the “sure loser” ticket. The result is that in many of these races, voters have a choice between the anointed and the annoying—marginal candidates who offer no new ideas, no energy, and no challenge. Pundits describe voter apathy as if it were a moral deficiency; I suggest it is instead a rational response to noncompetitive politics. (Watch those “apathetic” folks fight an unpopular rezoning!)  Reasonable people save their efforts for places where those efforts matter. Thanks to the proliferation of safe seats, those places may not include the voting booth.
• Gerrymandering exacerbates political polarization and gridlock. In competitive districts, nominees know they have to run to the middle to win in the fall. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, the battle takes place among the party faithful, who tend to be much more ideological.  Republican incumbents will be challenged from the Right and Democratic incumbents from the Left. Even where those challenges fail, they are a powerful incentive for the incumbent to protect his flank. So we elect nominees beholden to the political extremes, who are unwilling or unable to compromise.

Of the 150 members of our current legislature, 73 were unopposed in 1998. Most of the others had only token opposition.

Is this any way to run a representative democracy?