Not all gerrymanders are made equal
December 22nd, 2009 @ 2:09 pm by Nate Categories Tags: Arizona Redistricting, RedistrictingRedistricting
NOTE: RedistrictingFacts.com is taking a short break for the holidays. This will be our final post until we get back. Happy Holidays to all our readers!
The National Conference of State Legislatures published an article last week about the challenges of drawing redistricting plans. One of the stories they tell, about Arizona’s bizarrely-shaped 2nd District, reminded us that sometimes, the origins of the “ugliest”-looking districts have nothing to do with partisan politics:
River guides tell stories about the canyon that touch on hydraulics, geology, botany, history, zoology and culture. What you’re not likely to hear, however, is a story about why boats floating through the middle section of the Grand Canyon are in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District while the shore on either side is in the 1st Congressional District.Arizona’s U.S. House District 2 starts in suburban Phoenix and goes west in a narrow band to the border with California, where it stretches north in a broad swath through rural Arizona all the way to Utah. The district then heads east along the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in a thin tendril to connect to the relatively large Hopi Indian nation in northeast Arizona.
The Hopi land is surrounded entirely by Navajo territory, which is in the 1st Congressional District. In 2002, in public hearings before the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, which drew the map, draft versions of the district were compared to a flying giraffe and an ostrich. But in the end, one of the strangest shaped districts in the country was adopted because it addressed strong concerns from Hopi leaders that they did not want to be in the same district as the much larger Navajo tribe, with whom they have a smoldering land dispute dating back well over a century.
We’ve mentioned geographic rivalries in a few previous posts (in Louisiana and New York, for instance), and they exist in many, many states. But we often overlook the fact that these rivalries can have as much or more impact on a final redistricting plan than partisan considerations – especially in states with independent commissions or divided legislatures.
All together, it’s just one more part of an extraordinarily complicated process Democrats need to master next year.
Get The Facts
In total, 36 legislatures have the authority to control Congressional redistricting.
Legislatures draw the maps for 383 of the 435 congressional seats and 5074 of the 7333 partisan legislative seats.
Nationwide, Democrats are in charge of 60 legislative chambers, and 43 have the authority to control Congressional redistricting.
