<p>The ability for the citizens of a nation to determine their own representation has long been regarded as one of the most critical objectives of any electoral system. Without having the assurance of equality in representation, the fundamental nature and operation of the political system is severely undermined. Given the centuries of institutional reforms and population changes in the American system, Congressional Redistricting stands as an institution whereby this promise of effective representation can either be fulfilled or denied. The broad set of processes that encapsulate Congres- sional Redistricting have been discussed, experimented, and modified to achieve clear objectives and have long been understood to be important. Questions remain about how the dynamics which link all of these processes operate and what impact the real- ities of Congressional Redistricting hold for representation in the American system. This dissertation examines three aspects of how Congressional Redistricting in the Untied States operates in accordance with the principle of “One Person, One Vote.” By utilizing data and data analysis techniques of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this dissertation seeks to address how Congressional Redistricting impacts the principle of one person, one vote from the standpoint of legislator accountability, redistricting institutions, and the promise of effective minority representation.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / Every decade, following the U.S. Census, lawmakers redraw state and federal legislative districts. This process of redistricting is a necessary aspect of representative democracy for capturing population changes in a dynamic society. While this responsibility of redrawing legislative districts has historically been left to state legislatures to complete - and more recently to commissions and panels - the reality is that every redistricting cycle, some of these maps are actually drawn by the U.S. federal courts. These maps determine the district boundaries for millions of Americans - who votes where, for whom and with whom. Since the Supreme Court ruled that legislative reapportionment was a justiciable issue for federal judiciary in 1962’s landmark decision, Baker v Carr, the lower federal courts have regularly taken the extraordinary step of drawing legislative districts themselves when the initial redistricting institution fails to implement a lawful plan. This places the famously nonpartisan institutions at the center of the most political activity. There is no clear constitutional or statutory guidance for how federal courts should make these remedial maps, and there are dozens of competing criteria for where to draw each line: compactness, partisan advantage, racial representation, competitiveness, protection of political subdivisions, etc. This raises fundamental questions about the role of the federal courts in American government, the nature of representative democracy, judicial independence and the separation of powers, the criteria for judging fairness, institutional capacity and federalism. Despite these tensions, there has been no comprehensive research on the impact that federal courts have on redistricting. This dissertation aims to address these tensions and fill this scholarly gap, answering the question of What has been the impact of federal court involvement in legislative redistricting between 1962’s Baker v Carr and 2019’s Rucho v Common Cause. In this dissertation, I use five approaches to undertake a comprehensive examination of the role of the federal courts in redistricting during this 57-year period. In Chapter 2, I adapt Supreme Court decision making theories for the lower federal courts to develop a theory of institutional constraints. I argue these constraints determine the courts’ choices on when, how and why to make a redistricting map and which criteria to use. In Chapter 3, I use an American Political Development approach to examine the changes in judicially manageable standards created by the Supreme Court over time for understanding the legally constraining precedents for the lower courts. In Chapter 4, I conduct an original descriptive content analysis of more than 1,200 lower federal court decisions between 1960 and 2019 related to redistricting to understand the preconditions for federal court action, the trends in lower federal court caseload and outcomes, and the obedience of the lower courts to Supreme Court precedents. In Chapter 5, I present the analytical heart of this dissertation, testing my theory and defining what makes a federal court-made map distinct from those made by other institutions. To accomplish this goal, I use an original dataset of five decades of redistricting plans at the state and federal levels together with 13 varied quantitative methods developed by myself and other political scientists for measuring gerrymanders. Analyses of these data allow me to quantify the criteria used by the federal courts in distinction to other institutions, leading to predictive results about the federal courts as map makers. I find that federal courts create redistricting plans with lower population variance, more compact districts, and a higher proportion of majority-minority districts for descriptive racial representation than legislatures or commissions. Federal courts also create some partisan bias in their plans but at a lower level than is seen in legislatures. In Chapter 6, I take a qualitative, case study approach and compare these empirical results to the actual court opinions in four representative instances where the courts drew the maps. I examine how well judges understood the nonpolitical criteria they were actually using in practice and apply my theory of institutional constraints on lower federal courts. In sum, this dissertation offers: • new datasets and methods for studying redistricting institutions; • descriptive accounts of the trends, processes and development of federal courts redistricting; • an institutional theory and approach for studying the lower federal courts; • A detailed examination of the development of Supreme Court precedents on redistricting that constrain lower court decision making; • and quantitative and qualitative analyses of which criteria the federal judiciary favors when they draw plans and why. Most importantly, this dissertation finds that the criteria courts favor in practice differ from those used by state legislatures and commissions. Federal courts apply criteria shaped by judicial constraints and that reflect a distinct understanding of legislative representation. The dissertation’s conclusion examines the implications of these findings for American democracy, the lower federal courts, voters and constituents. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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In the post-1990 round of redistricting a number of majority-African American legislative districts were created, especially in the South. The new majority-African American districts were created by “pulling” many of the African Americans from surrounding districts into a single district, leaving the adjacent districts with a higher percentage of whites. These adjacent districts are often referred to as “bleached” districts. As the number of African Americans elected in the new majority-African American districts increased, so did the number of Republicans. This is referred to as the “perverse effect thesis.” This thesis has been widely acclaimed, but scholars have found minimal support for the thesis. There is an alternative explanation for the Republican growth. This explanation attributes it to the fact that, regardless of their distance from majority-African American districts; more southern whites are voting for Republican candidates. Generally, when scholars examine the perverse effect thesis, they have examined the twelve new southern majority-African American United States House of Representative districts that were created after the 1990 census. This study deviates from the prior studies that examine the perverse effect thesis. This study seeks to determine how many of the Republican gains in southern state lower chambers are attributable to the new majority-African American districts in these chambers from 1988 to 2004. It examines both the perverse effect thesis and the alternative hypothesis. Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi were used in this study. These states were used because they are part of the Deep South, and they are protected by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Deep Southern states have a larger African American population compared to the Rim states. This study found evidence supporting both the perverse effect thesis and the alternative hypothesis.

While drawing electoral districts and its special type called gerrymandering (redistricting with a certain purpose in mind) has been present in American politics since the founding of the United States, it has recently received a lot of attention and criticism. Gerrymandering has been accused of ruining electoral competition, contributing to the gridlock in Congress, and hampering the spirit of American democracy. Moreover, legislators responsible for redistricting are frowned upon for choosing their own voters and thus ruining the purpose of the electoral process. Redistricting currently follows certain principles, the most important of which and the only two recognized at the federal level are population equality and minority representation. These principles were designed to limit the redistricting bodies when drawing districts. State legislatures remain the most common redistricting institution. However, for the criticism that they face various redistricting commissions with different powers were established. The current trend in the redistricting reform is to delegate the redistricting power to independent commissions which can adopt a redistricting plan without the consent of a legislature and whose members have no connections to politics. Competition and partisanship are the two most discussed...

Districts are intermediary legislative institutions that structure the relationship between constituents and legislatures. Situated between citizens and their elected representatives, districts mediate citizen-legislator interaction, and may have wide-reaching effects on the representational relationship. By creating a political community, defining its interests by delineating its scale and boundaries, and structuring interaction between constituents and their elected representatives, districts shape the representational relationship. District characteristics alter the representational experience for constituents with very real consequences for trust in government, evaluations of legislative institutions and representatives, perceptions of responsiveness, and the degree and type of constituent-legislator communication. Three district characteristics are examined: the population size of legislative districts (constituency size), the shape of district boundaries (geographical compactness, and the extent to which district boundaries follow pre-existing political subdivision boundaries (boundary coterminousness). Using Census data and GIS, measures of these characteristics are created for every state legislative and congressional district (post-2000 redistricting) in the United States. These characteristics are combined with public opinion data to test for their influence on attitudes toward government, legislative institutions, and legislators, as well as the closeness of the representational relationship. The findings suggest constituency size is an important determinant of evaluations of government, institutions, and legislators at both the state and congressional level. The geographical districting principles of compactness and coterminousness influence the amount of constituent-legislator communication, knowledge of representatives, and in-person contact with representatives, primarily at the congressional district level. For decades, legislative districts have been drawn as if they matter only for the electoral success of legislative candidates and the partisan and racial groups those candidates represent. The primary contribution of this work is to show that districts matter beyond defining the dominant partisan or racial attributes of district constituents. Districts influence how representation is experienced by constituents.

This thesis analyzes the history behind reapportionment and how the task of redistricting has differed in the past decades. For the most part, there was always been a public outcry when the task was in the hands of the Legislature. Fear of political gerrymandering and the creation of safe districts was enough for people to pass a series of initiatives to try and correct the system. While many initiatives failed to pass, Proposition 11, passed in 2008, created the Citizen’s Redistricting Commission—a 14-member committee put in charge of drawing this years’ plans. This paper also looks at population trends in the past decade and takes into account the impact of the increase in Latinos in the state of California.

Redistricting is a challenging task in any state, and Alaska, with its vast geography, sparse population, and uneven population concentrations, presents a unique set of difficulties. The state requires that its legislative districts be contiguous, compact, and relatively socio-economically integrated. Further complicating the process are the requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Alaska is one of nine states required to submit its redistricting plans to the federal government for preclearance, as a result of a history of discrimination against a minority population. Under the VRA, Alaska must avoid retrogression of the voting power of its Alaska Native population. Particularly over the last couple of decades, the requirements of the VRA have come into conflict with the requirements of the state constitution. In the following paper, I will explore the impact of the VRA on redistricting in Alaska, with a particular focus on the redistricting cycle following the 2010 Census.