“The One Person One Vote Standard in Redistricting: The Uses and Abuses of Population Deviations in Legislative Redistricting”

Tom Brunnell has posted this draft on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Since the redistricting revolution of the 1960’s, which began with a series of Supreme Court decisions that forced states to draw equally populated districts for the U.S. House and state legislative chambers, the standards for Congress and legislative districts have evolved over time. Today’s standards call for virtually no population deviations for congressional districts, though legislative districts can typically deviate up to 10 percent. In practice this means that districts can vary by as much as five percent above and below the ideal population within a state. In this paper I demonstrate that these population deviations are a simple tool for those that redraw electoral boundaries to create a partisan gerrymander. If one party controls the redistricting process, districts from the opposite party are typically over populated and districts favoring the party in control are usually under populated. I demonstrate this phenomenon using data from 47 states after the 2000 round of redistricting. The paper concludes with a discussion on why that courts ought to abolish the “10-percent” rule.

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