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Ten Secrets of Redistricting By Steve Miller Redistricting is a wonderful mix of politics, law, cartography, demography and computer science. And you may feel that you need the wisdom of Solomon to accomplish it. Recall the great story of Solomon's wisdom: Two women claim to be the mother of the same baby, so Solomon proposes to cut the baby in two and give each women half. The first woman says, "Let me think about it." The other says, "Give the baby to her," revealing herself as the true mother. If the baby had been a legislative district, the two women would have said, "Sure, cut it up," and then fought over the halves. Eventually, they would have sued each other-one in state court, one in federal court. Even Solomon's wisdom might not be enough to aid you in the decennial redistricting that looms following the 2000 census. By following the 10 nuggets of advice below, however, you might manage to avoid some long nights and major headaches. Redistricting will never be easy or simple, but there are ways to minimize the trauma. 1. Know your mission. Adopt a mission such as "draw a legislative redistricting plan according to constitutional standards by Dec. 3, 2001." This will help you stay focused on the real business of redistricting - churning out maps. Read the redistricting statute and the state constitution-everyone else will. For example, the statute may authorize you to borrow staff from other state agencies. It may also limit travel reimbursement for committee members after a set number of days. Does your mission include keeping the public informed? Citizens are certain to offer input and ask to be involved. Consider putting a site on the World Wide Web to disseminate basic census data, precinct maps, redistricting plans and information about the legislature's redistricting process. As part of knowing your mission, you should understand your history. If you're new to redistricting, it will help to find out what issues emerged in your state during the previous redistricting cycles. History has a way of repeating itself. Issues from the '80s and '90s will almost certainly re-emerge. 2. Make decisions early. Computer technology and redistricting go hand in hand. Your state must decide if it will write software locally or purchase an off-the-shelf system. States like New Jersey and Virginia with elections in 2001, should be designing systems right now. Many states will start drawing new districts the day after receiving data from the Census Bureau. You do not want to design and build the airplane as it taxies down the runway. Accomplish as many tasks ahead of time as possible. Here are some of the things to do early to make the job easier:
3. Plan a timeline. Another useful device is a timeline. Analyze your 1990 experience and plan purchases of equipment and software in stages up through the year 2001. The plan can be modified as you move along. Due to U.S. Supreme Court decisions, consider whether your software will include a "compactness test." Computer programs can calculate how compact a district is by several recognized methods. Early on, select the features your software will offer, and pick what data to include in your files. Will you have past electoral behavior of each precinct? For which elections? It seems like just a data problem to the staff, but election history data is very subjective stuff with complex political implications. Acquiring data from local governments may present major challenges. With election data, you must have precinct maps in effect on the date of the elections. 4. Provide security for files. Secure both paper and digital files. As a general rule, copy all data on a computer disk to back up tapes daily. A disk crash won't hurt too badly if yesterday's plan is saved on the tape backup. Redistricting plans generated by legislators are the very essence of the process and must be treated as extremely valuable documents. Have uniform methods for labeling, filing, indexing plans and maps that you generate as well as maps received from others. Create a form, or small label, that has the minimum information to appear on plans and maps. 5. When it comes to staff, redundancy is good! As a staff person, when you're hot, you're hot-and everybody loves you. Legislators will love you. They will come to see you every day, all day long. They will call you at home. You will get to know them well. You will need more staff. Redistricting resembles "tag-team" wrestling. You need people to gather and edit data, maintain the software and network, draw district, and keep up with all the collateral files. Plan a way to get extra terminal operators on short notice. Train staff to run redistricting software. Plan for enough staff to cover for illnesses. Identify a good manager to oversee the whole circus. 6. When it come to equipment, redundancy is good! Make sure you have enough computer equipment. Never underestimate the need for more terminals, better processor speed, more disk space, faster networks or color plotters. Equipment will break down. When legislators, with little spare time, sit at a computer terminal to draw new districts, speed really counts. Advanced testing is critical. How many active terminals will the operation need at a time? How long will work sessions last? Mississippi usually had two terminals going at once for about 12 hours per day. But at times, there were four terminals running and sometimes sessions lasted 16 hours a day for days at a time. You will not regret acquiring the fastest computers. And hire enough terminal operators to support the effort. There are infinite ways to draw a district, and you many come close to exploring them all. Terminals will be busy most of the time. And don't forget to have comfortable chairs. 7. Separate the warring factions. I don't want to give redistricting a bad name, but it's a war, and war is hell. Doors and windows can cause problems because people can and will look through them to sneak a peek. Those drawing plans need privacy. Separate staff from members. Talk to the capitol police or sergeant at arms about security issues. 8. Don't play on the railroad tracks. Take extra care in the vicinity of great forces. No matter how many computers and staff are available, all resources will be used. In times of crisis, the demand will exceed the supply. Someone must act as gatekeeper to determine who gets to use the machines and the staff. Redistricting can be one of the toughest issues that a legislature has to deal with because it affects every member directly. Unfortunately, redistricting can bring out the worst in people. At some point, if the politics get too tough, the staff or other legislators may want to jump in between the contenders. However, one shouldn't feel the urge to step in between two oncoming trains. Don't make promises you can't keep. Don't forget the high stakes involved and that you lack control over the multitude of players. 9. Learn the new math. In drawing minority districts-or trying to maximize the number of them-you may fall well below the ideal population. If you try to minimize the number of those districts, the might become overpopulated. Therefore, the average (mean) population deviation from the ideal district size for all minority-controlled districts can indicate the effort to create minority districts. Consider the following equation. A=B/C where A=theoretical maximum percentage of minority-controlled districts in the plan, B=minority percentage of the overall population and C=percentage of a minority needed in a district for it to control the district. So, if there are 100 districts and the minority makes up 40 percent of the population, and it needs 60 percent of a district to control it, one could draw 66 districts controlled by the minority. This equation assumes an overall deviation of zero percent and ignores compactness. In the real world, you can draw a plan with a 10 percent deviation overall (for a state legislature), which may make it easier to draw minority-controlled districts. You cannot achieve the maximum because of the dispersion of the minority population, but you can probably do more than you thought possible. This formula explains why plans drawn out by human beings tend toward gerrymanders rather than compactness. 10. Adopt a grand strategy. Sometimes the staff drawn the plan, and sometimes the legislators do it. But regardless, it helps to look at the state overall before you start. In a statewide plan, where you want to make only changes that are absolutely necessary, you can begin with the existing plans. In an area experiencing dramatic population gains or losses, you may have to move or "pop" a district from one part of the state to another. But "popping" a district is a decision that is easier to make on the front end than after the plan is nearly done. If you are working with a particular criterion in mind, start in the most important place. If you want to create minority-controlled districts, start with them. Keep in mind that according to the Supreme Court, creating minority districts cannot be the predominant factor in the development of the plan. Generally, the place where you start will have the most compact districts, and the last area where you work will look the most contorted. You can judge this book by its cover because oddly shaped districts reveal the stresses of using conflicting criteria. If a district looks like a lizard, it probably is one. The Real Game is Politics Never forget that technology is only a tool and will play a minor part in the real game of deciding the geographical content or shape of districts. Redistricting is foremost a political activity that is supported and constrained by technology and law. Never assume or underestimate the political motivations of players in the redistricting game. To run a redistricting office, you need to understand the nature of the census data, the technology you will use to manipulate the data, the political environment that surrounds redistricting and the legal restraints upon the process. Add that understanding to the wisdom of Solomon, and you emerge from the process relatively unscathed. (And it might not hurt to follow the 10 pieces of advices offered above.) Happy line drawing. State Legislatures, Sept. 1999. Copyright 1999 by State Legislatures. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Steve Miller worked as a nonpartisan redistricting staff member for the PEER Committee in Mississippi during the 1990 round of redistricting and now is the chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau. He is also the staff co-chair of the NCSL Redistricting Task Force. BACK TO TOP
By Tim Storey PL 94-171. Congress passes this law in 1975, requiring the U. S. Census Bureau to furnish state governments data by April 1 of the year after the census for use in redistricting. The law requires that the bureau allow states to define the boundaries of the areas in which population data is collected. TIGER. Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing-the system and digital database developed at the Census Bureau to support its mapping needs for the census. Census Block. The smallest unit of geography used by the Census Bureau for counting people. There are over 7 million blocks in the Census Bureau's database. Blocks are almost always bounded by visible features such as roads and rivers. Phase I and Phase II. Programs run by the Census Bureau to collect boundary information from state and local governments. Phase I allows states to suggest boundaries for census blocks. Phase II lets states group blocks into precincts so that the official census data will contain precinct population totals. VTD. Voting tabulation district-usually a precinct or a ward. Minor Civil Division. A supervisor's district, police jury district or township. Typically, subdivisions of a county. Undercount. The estimated number of people who are not counted by the census. Differential Undercount. The difference in the undercount between ethnic groups. The undercount for ethnic groups has traditionally been higher than for whites. Sampling. A statistical technique used to estimate the whole population based on a sample. Proposed as a remedy for the undercount. GIS. Geographic Information System. Computer software that can display spatially encoded data in the form of maps. Overall Range or Overall Deviation. For a redistricting plan, the difference in population between the smallest and largest district, normally expressed as a percentage. Majority-minority districts. Districts where an ethnic or language minority group has more than half of the population. VAP. Voting age population-number of people over the age of 18. BVAP. Black voting age population-the percentage of population of blacks, 18 years or older. Packing. Drawing a minority-controlled district with an excessively high percentage of a minority population, "wasting" the additional people who could increase the minority population of another district. This is not allowed against an ethnic minority but is permissible against a political party. Fracturing. Splitting an area where a minority group lives so that it cannot form an effective majority in a district. Retrogression. Drawing a redistricting plan that reduces the chances for minority groups to elect representatives of their choice. Section 5 Preclearance. The procedure required by the Voting Rights Act where the Department of Justice must approve any change in election laws including any redistricting plan before the law becomes effective. Section 5 applies in all or parts of 16 states. State Legislatures, Sept. 1999. Copyright 1999 by State Legislatures. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. By Garry Boulard A huge study last year showed that despite the shift in power from Washington to the states, newspapers were cutting back on the number of reporters assigned to the statehouse beat. It seems like an idea whose time has come: a Web site for journalists, constituents and lawmakers devoted in its entirety to state legislative news. "We've been on line since Jan. 25, and so far we're seeing about 3,000 readers a day," reports Ed Fouhy, editor of Stateline.org, which is being produced by the Pew Center on the States. "We are not interested in sheer numbers. This is not a mass media site where we are competing with the Associated Press or CNN," continues Fouhy. "But even so, the response we've gotten has far exceeded our expectations." Just as impressive, the average visitor to the new site, according the Stateline's own detailed in-house readers' surveys, sticks around for nine to 10 minutes-an eternity in Web space. Fouhy believes such responses indicate a yawning hunger across the country for news coming out of the state capitals, particularly during a time when because of devolution there is more news to report. "We've seen a great deal of power and money going back to the states in recent years," Fouhy says, "which naturally means that the states themselves will be creating more news. But even more than that, the states finally have the authority to do things they've been saying for a long time they should be doing for themselves. That in itself makes them newsworthy." If the birth of Stateline.org reflects the shift of power from Washington to state capitals-perhaps the most important story of the 1990s-it also is indicative of a far less certain, and much more tentative response on the part of the press as to where government news comes from today. "We're hearing all kinds of things on that question," says Gene Roberts, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland and a long-time working reporter for such papers as The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. "On the one hand, newspapers want to make the claim that they provide their readers with the most comprehensive coverage possible," says Roberts. "But it is also true that there have been cutbacks in much of the state coverage, and this has proved to be a sore point with many of the larger papers." Roberts should know. In 1998 he helped compile a massive study funded by the Pew Center and released by the American Journalism Review that showed clearly that many papers across the country were reducing their state coverage and cutting back on the number of reporters assigned to roam the marble halls of state capitals. Empty Desks The study pulled no punches: "Coverage of state government is in steep decline," it said. "In capital press rooms around the country, there are more and more empty desks and silent phones. Bureaus are shrinking, reporters are younger and less experienced, stories get less space and poorer play, and all to frequently editors just don't care." The industry's response to the study was overwhelmingly negative. Newspapers across the country denied that they were shortchanging readers, or that reducing their staff presence at the legislatures meant a reduction in the amount or scope of coverage. Other papers argued that the study shortchanged them by failing to count the many special reporters they send to cover the legislature for singular topics such as science or environmental issues. "But we were not aware of any health care reporters coming to any capital and staying for weeks at a time," explains Roberts. "We counted only the correspondents who stuck with it day in and day out." Even so, the industry criticism of the study continued, proving at the very least that a nerve had been touched. "I guess some people got mad," laughs Reese Cleghorn, president of the American Journalism Review and dean of the college of journalism at the University of Maryland, "so that means the study had an effect because it is something the papers should be embarrassed about." The study also went beyond the numbers. It dug into the very marrow of how papers decide whether or not a legislative study is worth covering. An more often than not, researchers for the Pew report found that many editors today just don't give a hoot about legislative reporting. "They say, 'Don't do the procedurals, don't do the subcommittees, wait until something goes to a full committee,'" continues Cleghorn, "even though what happens at the subcommittee level may be the most important part of the legislative process." Big Picture Reporting This so-called big picture reporting is not without its critics. Dave McNeely, political columnist for the Austin American Statesman and a well-known advocate for increased statehouse reporting among the nation's papers, thinks following and writing about what happens to a bill as it pushes its way to final passage is the most interesting part of the process. It's what provides readers with a tangible view of where power resides in any given legislative session, he says. "A lobbyist friend of mine once told me there is only one way to pass a bill and that is through the House and Senate, ending when the governor signs it," says McNeely. "But there are 476 ways to kill a bill and knowing where those spots are and what the process is, is crucial to both lobbying and reporting." Jack Wardlaw, who reports on the Louisiana Legislature for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, says what happens to a bill in a committee or subcommittee can provide substance and shape that might alter the meaning and intent of the final legislation. "That's why it's important to report on the progress of a bill all the way through, particularly when it is something that the people care about anyway. If you don't, you're really doing the public a disservice." But even worse than failing to report on the ups and down of certain legislation is a much larger, and far less tangible, attitude on the part of many papers today concerning government reporting in general: "They don't like it," says Professor Roberts. "We were amazed to discover just how many editors today are philosophically opposed to governmental coverage in general. It is just in the air. Some newspaper companies and editors even go as far as the simply believe that state government and all government news is a big turn-off to readers, so they want to stay away from it." Former Pennsylvania Speaker of the House and frequent press critic Bob O'Connell sees all of this as inevitable: "You have to look at the press as a business, and until you do that you are not going to understand the story." O'Donnell argues that the frequently aired declarations fro the press that they are here to serve and fight for the public's right to know are basically nothing more that a lot of smoke and noise. "Those kinds of statements are essentially self-serving," charges O'Donnell. "Informing the citizenry is not their main goal, making a buck is. And when you see it that way-that this is nothing more than a business looking for a market, and if reporting on lifestyles instead of the legislative process is what gets them their market-all of this begins to make much more sense." Entertaining News Alan Rosenthal of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University has his own take: "Papers want to find stuff that connects with their audience, things that affect their personal lives, news that is more entertainment-oriented. "That makes it kind of hard to sell that story about the legislature discussing energy deregulation. People just don't see what it has to do with them," he says. But Rosenthal says he can't wonder but if a shrinking state press corps is such a bad thing: "Given the nature of the coverage, I am not really all that devastated." Industry insiders say the primary reason for the decrease in state coverage is found in the results of the many readers' surveys that papers regularly conduct. These are surveys usually commissioned by a paper or publishers' group and intended to gauge public satisfaction or the lack of it with a given newspaper. Should the front page type be bigger or smaller? Would you like to see more or fewer graphs and color? How about the amount of sports reporting and the number and variety of cartoons? But the answers to such surveys are oftentimes colored by the manner in which questions are asked and their context. And sometimes the survey results can be downright contradictory. In 1990 some 63 percent of the readers of The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., said in a survey that they would read the paper more if fewer of the stories from the front page "jumped" to an inside page. In response, the Register began to run shorter stories, half of which began and ended on the front page. Goodbye to those annoying jumps. Then in 1997 came another survey for the same paper, and it showed that 59 percent said they wanted to read longer stories in the newspaper, and would be more likely to read the Register even if a story from the front page jumped to an inside page. Similar surveys repeatedly indicate that readers dislike meaty government pieces, whether of the reporting or analytical variety, prompting publishers and editors to cut such coverage. But the problem with such marketing research is that it is anything but solid or sure. "Much of it is subjective, unscientific and amendable to manipulation," contends the American Journalism Review in another epic study, this one released in March on how reader surveys are conducted. "Its heavy reliance on focus groups constitutes a serious weakness. Its results always depend on the questions asked. And questions of interest to serious journalists (for instance, what's the impact of challenging a community's cherished assumptions?) are almost never explored." Perhaps the landmark readers' survey was sponsored by the Newspaper Advertising Bureau and the American Newspaper Publishers Association in the late 1970s. Comments from some 3,000 respondents indicated that readers wanted more attention paid "to their personal needs, help in understanding and dealing with their own problems in an increasingly complex world." Newspaper publishers and editors across the country took those results to mean that people also disliked governmental reporting, beginning the long drive to lessen coverage on the national, state and local levels. And even though the two principal authors of the 1978 Newspaper Readership Project later argued that their findings had been taken out of context, the trend has clearly continued. Fewer Reporters As of 1998, according to the Pew study, virtually every major newspaper had pulled back on its statehouse reporting. In some 27 states, there were fewer reporters covering state news than just six years ago, while only 14 states could report increases. Part of the decline is due to the collapse of the United Press International news service, which was once a major presence in virtually every state capital. Other statehouse reporters were lost to mergers or the closing of such papers as the Baton Rouge State Times, the Nashville Banner, the Phoenix Gazette and the Arkansas Gazette. The giant Gannett and Knight-Ridder newspaper chains have reduced their statehouse reporting staffs by more than 14 percent followed by smaller decreases at the Newhouse and MediaWatch chains. But individual papers such as The Albuquerque Journal, The Charlotte Observer and The Times-Picayune have seen moderate gains in the number of reporters assigned to the state legislatures. "Our statehouse staff has actually increased in recent years," says McNeely of the Austin American Statesman. But in a state that has seen an abnormal amount of press closings, including the Houston Post, the Dallas Times Herald and the San Antonio Light, the surviving papers in these big Texas markets, according to McNeely, "don't do as much state reporting as they used to mainly because they don't have the competition they once did. There's a lack of incentive." Ironically, as many in-state papers have cut back on their statehouse reporting, national papers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have increased their state staffs. The New York Times, in fact, has emphasized increased statehouse reporting on its national pages, a move that Robin Toner lauds as a move in the right direction. "The Times today takes the states incredibly seriously. And, what with welfare and more of the important stuff getting kicked out the states as opposed to being dealt with exclusively in Washington, this is the kind of coverage we should be providing." Toner, who was the chief of correspondents for the national desk at the Times and is now covering policy news in Washington, comes to her interest in state news naturally: She covered the West Virginia and then Georgia legislatures when she began her career as a journalist in the late 1970s. She now says she cannot imagine tackling Washington without the experience she gained at the state legislature level. "There is a certain rhythm to covering a legislative body that is transferable," says Toner. "And that helped me immensely when it came to trying to understand Washington." Stringers Help The New York Times does not maintain a presence in every one of the state capitals, but it does employ an elaborate network of stringers and paid correspondents who deep the regional bureaus and the national desk back in New York abreast of statehouse events. If a story is particularly important, the Times will send in one of their heavy hitters to cover it at the statehouse. "You don't see much of them unless there is a big story unfolding with true national interest," says Wardlaw of the Times-Picayune. He remembers the explosive abortion rights debates that took place in the Louisiana Legislature during the early 1990s, which attracted staff reporters from the Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, far and above their usual stringers. "They ganged up on us then," says Wardlaw. Similarly at USA Today, columnist Rich Wolf, who willingly said adios to writing about Washington in favor of emphasizing the states, does not actually visit each and every one of the state capitols, nor does he write about them all. But his net is wide if he can spot a trend. "That's the best thing about this business," explains Wolf. "So often there will be five or six or eight states tackling something like welfare reform or term limits at the same time. That is perfect for my column because then I can write about as many states as possible with this one topic and compare and contrast the things they are doing." The New York Times, says Toner, uses the same approach. "I think we are looking for patterns: Is what is happening in Oklahoma also happening in Texas and Missouri? And are we going to be the first to pick up on it?" Although on many days the Times does indeed reach deep into the South through its Atlanta bureau or out West with the desk in Los Angeles, the paper obviously continues to emphasize its coverage of states nearest to its circulation base: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut in particular. "If they are a state legislative paper," says Rosenthal, "that legislature is in Albany." Although no one argues that increased attention of the Times and other national publication will compensate for the cutbacks in statehouse reporting on the part of the other big city and capital city dailies, statehouse reporting advocates are fighting back. October Seminar In October, the editors of the Colorado Springs Gazette, in conjunction with the Pew Center as well as several other sponsoring groups (including the NCSL), will host a three-day seminar designed to examine the state of statehouse reporting. The idea, says Steve Smith, managing editor at the Gazette, is partly to talk about "the possibility of organizing ourselves into some sort of professional organization that would help perpetuate the craft of statehouse reporting." With more than 400 statehouse reporters from around the country already signed up for the conference, Smith says the meeting could also serve to symbolize the commitment that at least this part of the press feels toward "quality legislative coverage." Whether or not their publishers will be listening is another matter. Meanwhile the editors of the massive Pew study that got everyone charged up in the first place are hoping to find funding for a second study that may show marginal increases in the number of reporters covering state capitols. "The evidence is only anecdotal at this point," says Professor Roberts. "But from what we've been hearing, many of the papers who reduced their staffs by 1996 and 1997 have turned around and hired new reporters to cover the legislature. We just don't know at this point if the new gains are enough to make up for the old losses. Probably not. But at least it's a step in the right direction." For Fouhy at Stateline.org the idea that any news organization could ignore or choose not to cover the states is inconceivable. "Now more than ever, the papers should be following state events because there is so much going on there," he says. He notes by way of illustration that the states recently were earmarked for more than $30 billion in federal money that was once used to fund more than 100 job and vocational training programs. "So the obvious question is what are the states going to do with that money? How will they do anything different? What new ideas will they come up with?" Fouhy continues. "How can any paper not want to cover stories like this?" State Legislatures, June 1999. Copyright 1999 by State Legislatures. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. |