Mar 5, 2018 By Jacob Calvin Meyer staff Writer jmeyer@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

With gerrymandering court cases being argued in several states across the country, including Pennsylvania, organizers with Fair Districts PA visited Mt. Lebanon Public Library Feb. 26 to talk about the problem.

The nonpartisan, anti-gerrymandering organization explained the two century-old practice and how it affects Western Pennsylvania to the group of 70-plus attendees.

To start the presentation, Anna Fisher, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and a Pittsburgh resident, defined gerrymandering.

“Gerrymandering is changing the boundaries of congressional or legislative districts in the way that is not to maximize compliance with the constitutional requirements, but in a way that maximizes the benefits to individual politicians or to parties,” she said.

The term goes all the way back to 1812 when Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts, manipulated districts to his advantage, earning the naming of the practice after him.

Fisher made it a point to explain gerrymandering, while recently done by Republicans in Pennsylvania – as decided by a recent state Supreme Court ruling throwing out the current Congressional maps – is done by both parties.

“This is parties fighting for power, and we’re all on the losing end of this,” Fisher said. “No matter what your opinion is, whether you’re red or blue, representatives that get elected have no incentive to listen to you no matter what your opinion is.”

As an example of how gerrymandering takes effect, Fisher showed the comparison to the 2012 and 2016 elections. In 2012, Democrats received slightly more votes than Republicans, but because the maps were gerrymandered by a Republican-led state legislature and signed by then-Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, Republicans still won 13 of the 18 districts. Four years later, Republicans won more votes than Democrats, but the outcome was still the same: 13-5.

“It’s as if it doesn’t matter whether we go to the polls or not,” she said. “I think this is deeply undemocratic, because it actually is the case that the system was designed so that it doesn’t matter how we vote.”

Fisher explained that a new map must be drawn every 10 years after the U.S. Census, so gerrymandering can take many different forms. The first type, which isn’t as popular today, is the “sweetheart” gerrymander, which is when both parties draw a map to benefit each other.

“It looks like it’s fair and square, but it’s not,” Fisher said, explaining that the votes of the people don’t matter in the sweetheart gerrymander. “And that’s the nicest of the gerrymanders.”

The other two types are called “cracking” and “packing.”

Cracking is when voters of one affiliation are spread out into many different districts to lessen the power of that group of people, while packing is combining a lot of voters in one district so that party wins that district, but loses the surrounding ones.

Simply put, gerrymandering creates “unfair and uncompetitive” districts, Fisher said.

While gerrymandering has been around for more than 200 years, Fisher said mapping technology and data mining have changed how precisely legislators can gerrymander.

“It used to be to gerrymander effectively, people had to print out a map, put it on the wall, have push pins and guesstimate how to maximize their advantage,” Fisher said. “They don’t have to do this now. With a few clicks of a map, they can see exactly how to maximize their advantage.”

Along with Fisher as a Fair District speaker was D. David Misra, an Upper St. Clair resident, an adjunct professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Education at the Community College of Allegheny County and founder of Development Worx LLC, a consulting firm for the nonprofit, government and education sectors.

Misra then explained how the 18th Congressional District has changed over the years, going through the different maps over the last 50 years.

Specifically about the 2001 and 2011 maps, Misra said, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” to see that the maps are gerrymandered to help Republicans.

“To preserve the 18th district for Republicans…you’ve got this Frankenstein monster district,” said. “Tim Murphy even ran unopposed a few times. He never got less than 57 percent of the vote.”

Misra added that Pennsylvania is hardly the only state in the country with gerrymandering in the news. There are currently 11 court cases about gerrymandering around the country. The biggest is Gill v. Whitford in Wisconsin, which is likely to be heard by the Supreme Court during the summer.

“Wisconsin’s almost as bad as Pennsylvania for gerrymandering,” he said.

Fisher pointed to two bills in the state legislature right now, Senate Bill 22 and House Bill 722, that would enact redistricting reform in Pennsylvania. The process to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution is difficult, but Misra and Fisher said it’s vital to the future of the commonwealth.

“The only way to make it fair is to take the map out of the hands of politicians and give the maps to us, the people,” Fisher said.