Introduction
Redistricting is the most purely political of all legislative activities as it reallocates
political influence. While the story of Elbridge Gerry and the infamous salamander district in
Boston is used commonly to show how legislators draw district lines for political advantage, the
simple truth is that all legislative redistricting is done for some political advantage. As Douglas
Rae noted, "electoral laws are of special importance for every group and individual in the
society, because they help to decide who writes the other laws."
question is: "Whose ox gets gored?"
Congressional districts are drawn anew every decade because of the constitutional
However, it is the within state allocation of those seats that is most interesting to observe.
Districts can be drawn to advantage rural areas over urban areas, incumbents over potential
challengers (or to target an incumbent to prevent reelection), racial majorities over racial
minorities, or one party over another. Of course, districts could also be drawn objectively, with a
computer program designed to assure maximum local "community of interest" consideration as
measured by drawing lines most coincident with local city or county boundaries. Or computer
programs could make all districts as equal as possible in geographic size. Or some other
objective criterion could be used. But in truth, no vested interest in politics would allow such
"objective" processes to redistrict a state precisely because lines could not be drawn for political
advantage.
Before the series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s requiring that virtually all
representational districts be apportioned equally in population, redistricting formulas within
states often led to wide disparities in population among districts. This process often led to rural
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Convention