High school student Kalen Stewart surveyed academic solutions to gerrymandering, finding two main approaches: stricter rules on district maps (like the Efficiency Gap test) or switching to alternative voting systems like multi-winner approval voting. Most research uses simulations rather than real-world comparisons, leaving unclear which system actually works best.
Hello, I'm Kalen Stewart. This is a review of solutions to combat gerrymandering in the United States. This paper was advised by Dr. Jason Dou and Dr. Jonathan Wong. In the United States of America, congressional districts are controlled by states, and only 17 states have any rules that relate to partisan fairness. Federal law is also very minimal on rules that are related to districting. This allows states to draw maps that don't accurately reflect the will of the people that reside there by skewing the results in ways that favor particular outcomes for particular groups, whether partisan, racial, or some other type of grouping. This is known as gerrymandering. To gerrymander effectively, weak districts are segregated and strong districts are paired to disenfranchise voters through a combination of packing and cracking opposition voting blocs, which makes voters lose trust in democracy. So what has been studied? Researchers are looking at how one gerrymanders effectively, how it affects voters' perceptions of democracy, how to measure amounts of gerrymandering, and ways to change the U.S.'s electoral system to disincentivize gerrymandering. Although they use different methods and metrics such as polls or experiments and algorithms to study different subjects, research often uses election data to study gerrymandering's economics and legal tests that should be used. Researchers also often disagree on what would be the most optimal way to combat gerrymandering, as there are multiple ideas that range from interstate compacts to implementing an entirely different electoral system, such as proportional representation, as you can see in that second picture. In general, earlier literature studied how to regulate redistricting in its current single-member district framework, while more modern literature more so studies how different electoral systems could be implemented to make gerrymandering less useful and inviting. So what similarities and differences are there between some of these various topics studied. When we look at articles through a system perspective, we can find 2 broad categories. A number of studies advocate for switching to a different electoral system as opposed to first-past-the-post, while others look for a stricter set of regulations on the current electoral system. Which has single-member districts and partisan redistricting. On papers that focus on potential regulations on our current electoral system, there are also divides on whether it should be settled more by the state level or on the federal level. An example of a work promoting federal change in this category is Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap by Nicholas Stephanopoulos and Eric McGee, which advocates for a legal test that courts can use to define partisan gerrymander— gerrymandering through the efficiency gap. This is a percentage which captures the amount of wasted votes in a districting plan. Through the draftsmen packing and cracking opposition voters by representing the difference between various parties' wasted votes in an election, which is divided by the total number of votes after that. An example of a work that is a proponent of state-level change, however, is Mutually Assured Democracy: Cooperating Under the Compact Clause to Combat Partisan Gerrymandering by Samuel L. P. Leroy. In this paper, he advocates for mutual cooperation between states to collectively de-gerrymander the country through interstate compacts, as he argues that it would break the pressures that incentivize state governments to gerrymander to maximize party potential in their states. Meanwhile, papers that focus on implementing different electoral systems typically disagree on what would be the quote-unquote best, but they typically argue that their system is the most efficient in that it wastes the least amount of votes cast. In the excess method, a multi-winner approval voting procedure to allocate waste votes by Stephen J. Brams, Marcus Brill, and Anne-Marie George. They propose a type of approval voting that would minimize the amount of votes wasted by moving the excess votes of the winning candidate to other candidates that are also approved by their voters. In apportion voting, by Lloyd Koenig. He designs an electoral system that is both proportional and allows people to cast multiple votes by combining aspects of ranked choice voting, as seen in the first picture, and cumulative voting, as seen in the second. These both allow the elimination of districts, making gerrymandering hard to impossible. In essence, the literature is all trying to solve the same problem, but it's all just through a different set of constraints, whether purely through current law or by radically changing how people vote and/or who they vote for. The literature in this area all focuses on responding to gerrymandering. Several studies use simulated elections as their method. To study their efficiency gap, for example. However, they differ in whether they work within the current electoral system or whether they study other electoral systems that can be implemented in the U.S. One remaining limitation is that there haven't been many comparisons between each electoral system on which one is more fair or efficient, as many papers claim that their electoral systems are fair and efficient. Therefore, possible research questions are, what electoral system is the most efficient? Or what electoral system is the most representative? These questions can study many electoral systems on a select few criteria, definitively answering these questions. Some criteria that I recommend studying are resistance to strategic voting, resistance to spoilers, dominant consensus, or whether the system's results reflect the will of the majority of voters, simplicity of vote tabulation, and proportionality through race, gender, and political identity. These questions are important to ask because when we have a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people, we must ensure that all people are represented in the picture and not be forced to compromise on their values while voting. To know what best ensures that and then to implement it guarantees that voters trust government more and that the government tries to cater to all of its citizens. These are my references, and thank you for listening.
