Earnest reformers in Illinois attribute much of the poisonous political partisanship that plagues us to the evils of partisan redistricting -- "gerrymandering.” Well, they are wrong.
Reformers have cause and effect perfectly reversed. Pre-existing and intensifying partisanship distorts redistricting, not vice versa. The problem is not how the lines are drawn, but rather where the people are.
We are becoming more partisan, and, for various reasons that we can explain, partisan people tend to cluster together. Democrats tend to live with Democrats. Republicans tend to live with Republicans. One insightful author termed it "The Big Sort."
Impartial computer simulations by political scientists have produced basically the same voting results as partisan gerrymandering. Of course they have, because of where the voters live. Partisan voting in the U.S. Senate is slightly higher than in the House, and the Senate is never redistrricted.
We are becoming more partisan; that is the real problem. If we just look up from the maps, that fact becomes obvious. We are becoming a house divided against itself and that, as Lincoln warned so eloquently, is potentially fatal. Redistricting is a result of pre-existing partisanship, not a cause.
Hyperpartisanship is a grave issue, and insightful work has been done to address that issue. We ought to focus our efforts on that problem rather than on misguided antiseptic cartography. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our maps, but in ourselves."
I'm Bob Evans, and that's my perspective.
