What is the difference between gerrymandering and malapportionment

This gave the remaining residents 25 times the voting power compared to the rest of the state. As a result, incarcerated people are residents of where their prisons are located, rather than where they lived before incarceration.

Incarcerated people have been counted this way since However, over the last few decades, local and state governments have used this data for redistricting, so where people are counted matters.

This distortion in voting occurs in nearly all states barring Vermont and Maine because they generally do not allow incarcerated people to vote.

It is thus an issue of malapportionment—which defies the one-person, one-vote principle—rather than one of districting and line-drawing. The problems involving this malapportionment are particularly severe in modern-day due to mass incarceration. Researchers often liken prison malapportionment to the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise, which increased the political clout of more rural states by counting three-fifths of their enslaved populations.

In modern-day, incarcerated people have no say in their representation or ties to the local areas in which they are placed, yet they are used to continuously bolster the power of these communities. You are being used to shore up the political power of a district that has nothing to do with you. Power and Priorities. An obvious issue that detracts support to end prison gerrymandering is the loss in political power for rural communities.

Without the inflationary effect, people in rural areas would have voting power more equivalent to other districts. Further, redistricting means that local politicians would need to shift their political priorities and would need to widen their campaigns to gain political support. Legislators in these communities have the incentive to keep a high proportion of people in their prisons to shore up power.

They are more motivated to block criminal justice reform that would decrease prison populations, effectively continuing mass incarceration.

When it comes time to fill out the Census, the Bureau makes sure to emphasize that the data are used to determine the distribution of federal funding to states and local communities. Municipalities often stress the importance of each person filling out the Census, and they fear that not counting people in prison in their areas will make them miss out on extra-funding.

However, this is false. Census data may be used to determine funding, but redistricting data has no effect on the formulas used for funding. While it distorts local and state representation, prisons do not draw in federal or state funding for their host communities. States that passed laws ending prison gerrymandering prior to did not see any impacts on their funding, and those that passed laws after should not expect it either.

Another point of contention is how this would affect college students. Would they be restricted from voting where their schools are located? Incarcerated people and students have fundamental differences in the way they interact with and live in the communities they are counted in. Students are there voluntarily , consuming local goods and services, voting in local elections, and sometimes staying in these areas post-graduation.

They have a choice to participate in these aspects of their college-communities, and in most cases, these areas rely heavily on those students. Before , students were counted in their parent communities but were eventually given the opportunity to change their residences.

However, with the Census , they are now counted according to their onshore residence. Summary: The New Jersey Legislature drew a congressional plan that had a total deviation of 3, people, or 0. The Supreme Court held that parties challenging a congressional plan bear the burden of proving that population differences among districts could have been reduced or eliminated by a good-faith effort to draw districts of equal population.

If the plaintiffs carry their burden, the state must then bear the burden of proving that each significant variance between districts was necessary to achieve some legitimate state objective.

Evenwel v. Abbott , S. Summary: Since Reynolds and Wesberry , states have almost universally used total population as the unit for calculating population equality for districting plans. The Supreme Court held that its past opinions confirmed that states may use total population in order to comply with one person, one vote.

The court did not hold that other methods are impermissible. Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission , No. Significance: The creation of a redistricting commission for congressional districts via ballot initiative does not violate the Elections Clause of the U.

Summary: In , Arizona voters created the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission via ballot initiative to redraw state legislative districts and congressional districts. In , the Arizona Legislature challenged the right of the commission to draft congressional lines, arguing that the Elections Clause of the U.

Constitution only grants two institutions the power to regulate the time, place, or manner of electing congressional representatives: the legislatures in each of the states, or Congress.

Thornburg v. Gingles , U. Summary: Following the amendments to the Voting Rights Act VRA , it was unclear precisely when the VRA would require a majority-minority district be drawn to prevent vote dilution. A later case, Bartlett v. Strickland , U. Shaw v. Reno, U. Significance: Legislative and congressional districts will be struck down by courts for violating the Equal Protection Clause if they cannot be explained on grounds other than race.

Durham vs. Charlotte had the same interests, and did not have independent local needs that would be better served by having a more locally-oriented representative. Miller v. Johnson , U. Summary: Following Shaw , it remained unclear what the standard of review was under the new racial gerrymandering doctrine.

In Miller , the U. Plaintiffs challenged the newly drawn districts as racial gerrymanders. The Supreme Court held for the plaintiffs, and established the rule for racial gerrymandering claims: if a district is drawn predominantly on the basis of race, it violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Bush v. Vera , U. Significance: If you want to argue that partisan politics, not race, was your dominant motive in drawing district lines, beware of using race as a proxy for political affiliation. To survive strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and avoid being struck down as a racial gerrymander, a district must be reasonably compact. Summary: Under the reapportionment of seats in Congress, Texas was entitled to three additional congressional districts.

The Texas Legislature decided to draw one new Hispanic-majority district in South Texas, one new African-American-majority district in Dallas County, and one new Hispanic-majority district in the Houston area. In addition, the legislature reconfigured a district in the Houston area to increase its percentage of African Americans. The legislature used sophisticated software that allowed it to redistrict with racial data at the census block level.

The Supreme Court struck down three districts, holding that race was the predominant factor in drawing the lines. In these districts, the court concluded that districts drawn to satisfy Section 2 of the VRA must not subordinate traditional redistricting principles more than reasonably necessary.

Shelby County v. Holder, No. As a result, redistricting plans and other changes in voting laws, such as voter identification requirements, need not be approved before they take effect. Attorney General or the U.

District Court for the District of Columbia a determination that the change neither had the purpose nor would have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, or membership in a language minority group. It balanced the exceptional conditions surrounding implementation of the Voting Rights Act with the basic principles of the 10th Amendment. The 10th Amendment reserves to the states all powers not specifically granted to the federal government.

This includes the power to regulate elections. In addition, the principle of equal sovereignty among the states frowns upon their disparate treatment.

It also found that the exceptional conditions that gave rise to the Voting Rights Act no longer existed. Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama , No. Significance : Racial gerrymandering claims proceed district-by-district, not against an entire plan.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act does not require a covered jurisdiction to maintain a specific numerical minority percentage when redistricting.

Summary : The district court upheld an Alabama Legislative redistricting plan that tried to make populations nearly equal in the districts, and attempted to maintain the same black population percentages in these districts as those in the plan from the previous decade.

The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case to the district court for several reasons. Cooper v. Harris , No. Significance: Partisanship cannot be used to justify a racial gerrymander. This case represents a synthesis of earlier cases on the requirements of Section 2 as set out in Gingles, and the now well-developed case law on racial gerrymandering that began with Shaw v.

Summary: Voters in two North Carolina congressional districts challenged their districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The state argued the case on two primary grounds. First, the state argued the increase in the percentage of black voters in the district was required to avoid a potential vote dilution challenge under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Second, the state argued that any gerrymandering that had transpired was strictly partisan. Summary : Connecticut voters challenged the redrawing of Senate and House districts by the Apportionment Board. The complaint alleged that the plan was a political gerrymander that favored the Republican Party. It should be noted, that in Larios v. In Larios , Plaintiffs challenged the congressional and House plans and the and Senate plans enacted by the Georgia General Assembly on various grounds.

A three-judge federal district court upheld the congressional plan but struck down the legislative plans as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. The order regarding the Senate plan was stayed pending preclearance of the plan. The overall range of both the House plan and the Senate plan was 9.

The plans also systematically paired Republican incumbents while reducing the number of Democratic incumbents who were paired. The plans tended to ignore the traditional districting principles used in Georgia in previous decades, such as keeping districts compact, not allowing the use of point contiguity, keeping counties whole, and preserving the cores of prior districts. Davis v. Bandemer , U.

Significance: Partisan gerrymandering claims may be brought in federal courts under the Equal Protection Clause. While a standard for measuring partisan gerrymanders was established, it was so difficult to satisfy that no partisan gerrymander was struck down under the Bandemer discriminatory effects test, which was abandoned in Vieth v. Jubelirer , U. Summary: Democrats in Indiana challenged the legislative redistricting plan, claiming the district lines intentionally discriminated against them in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

The court required that, in order to prove partisan discrimination, a plaintiff political group must prove that those drawing a plan had an intent to discriminate against them, and that the plan had a discriminatory effect on them.

The court assumed that a discriminatory intent would not be hard to prove. As Justice Byron White said for the majority, "We think it most likely that whenever a legislature redistricts, those responsible for the legislation will know the likely political composition of the new districts and will have a prediction as to whether a particular district is a safe one for a Democratic or Republican candidate or is a competitive district that either candidate might win.

On the other hand, a discriminatory effect, until at least publication, has been impossible to prove.