[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 127 (Tuesday, July 29, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H7284-H7287]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             GERRYMANDERING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TANNER. I rarely take out a Special Order. I rarely speak about 
matters that have something other to do than the governance of our 
country, and tonight is no exception. I want to talk a little while 
tonight about something that affects every American, something we, 
unfortunately, pay little attention to because it is not something that 
we recognize when we see it or realize what's happening as it's 
happening, and that has to do with our system of government and the way 
that the redistricting process as to how we elect Members of the United 
States House of Representatives has evolved through the years.
  Gerrymandering has always been a problem; named for the gentleman 
from Massachusetts some 200 years ago, when district lines were first 
conceived and drawn. But really, the modern-day gerrymandering that I 
am going to talk a bit a little while tonight began really in 1962 and, 
interestingly enough, it came to the Supreme Court from a case out of 
Tennessee, my home State. Let me give you a little summary, a history.
  During the first half of the 20th century, Tennessee, along with many 
other traditionally rural States, experienced growth in urban areas, 
along with a decline in the rural population. In the late 1950s, 
Tennessee continued to use election district boundaries set over 60 
years before to elect members of its State legislature. These district 
boundaries no longer reflected the true distribution of the State's 
population.
  By retaining the outdated election district boundaries, rural 
citizens were allotted a greater proportional representation than their 
counterparts in urban areas. The continued use of the outdated district 
boundaries eased the reelection of incumbent legislators and diluted 
the voting power of ethnic minorities and others living in urban areas. 
For example, the number of Memphis voters electing one State 
representative was 10 times the number of voters electing a 
representative in some rural districts in our State.
  After serving in World War II, a gentleman named Charles Baker 
returned to his hometown of Millington, Tennessee, in my congressional 
district, our congressional district, which is a suburb of 
Memphis. Baker entered politics and, in 1954, was elected chairman of 
the Shelby County Quarterly Court, a fiscal and legislative body that 
ran the affairs of Shelby County, Tennessee, which included Memphis.

  Baker became frustrated with the lack of State revenues and attention 
paid to Memphis. Due to the use of outdated election district 
boundaries, Memphis was represented by half the number of State 
legislators it rightfully deserved, based upon its population.
  Baker brought a lawsuit against Joe Carr, Sr., who was then 
Tennessee's Secretary of State, requesting the State legislature redraw 
the election district boundaries to reflect the actual demographics of 
the State. In a 6-2 ruling in the case of Baker v. Carr, the United 
States Supreme Court held that Federal courts have the power to 
determine the constitutionality of a State's voting district.
  In a decision delivered by Baker v. Carr, the court focused on the 
issues of whether the court could involve itself in an apportionment 
dispute, and in addressing this issue, the court held that 
apportionment was a Federal claim arising under the 14th amendment and 
therefore subject to judicial scrutiny by the courts. Additionally, the 
voters initiating this case had claimed that their votes were being 
arbitrarily impaired or debased.
  The court's decision sidestepped the prior decision in Colegrove by 
distinguishing claims brought under the equal protection clause of the 
14th amendment from those claims brought under the guarantee clause of 
article 4 of the Constitution.
  The court returned the case to the district court for further actions 
pursuant to their instructions. I quote, ``We conclude that the 
complaint's allegations of a denial of equal protection present a 
justiciable Constitution cause of action on which appellants are 
entitled a trial and decision. The right asserted is within the reach 
of judicial protection under the 14th amendment.''
  By holding that voters could challenge the constitutionality of 
electoral apportionment in Federal court, Baker v. Carr opened the 
doors of the Federal courts to a long line of apportionment cases. One 
year later, Justice Douglas extended the Baker ruling by establishing 
the so-called ``one man, one vote'' principle in Gray v. Sanders and, 
in 1964, in the case of Wesberry v. Sanders, extended that principle, 
further holding that, ``as nearly as practicable, one man's vote in a 
congressional election is to be worth as much as another's.''
  Madam Speaker, the system that we have after 40-plus years of the 
court turning over electoral redistricting to the ``ins'' has resulted 
in a broken system, in the view of myself and Mr. Wamp, who couldn't be 
here tonight, from Chattanooga, and also on behalf of the Blue Dog 
Coalition, which has endorsed the legislation I am speaking about.
  What we are concerned about is the rise of not only reapportionment 
based on party ideology and party lines, but it has given, with modern 
technology, the ability of the ``ins,'' be they Republican or 
Democrats, to select their voters rather than their voters selecting 
them.
  If one looks at the electoral map, one can only wonder how in the 
world could this come about, with lines going

[[Page H7285]]

down highways and across bridges and every sort of conceivable spider 
web district, where the voters really have little input and almost no 
say in what districts they are in.
  We have, by in essence turning over to the ``ins,'' given rise to 
this completely understandable phenomenon. As a Democrat, it behooves 
me to give my next-door neighbor all my Republicans and it behooves my 
next-door neighbor Republican to give me all of his or her Democrats, 
which means that both of us have a more secure seat and the voters are 
often completely left out of the mix.
  There are many groups that are now looking at this and beginning to 
realize that the system is truly broken. And so let me just give you 
some statistics that may shock you about the lack of competitiveness in 
this Congress and in the Congresses to come if we don't fix it.
  Increasingly, State legislators, for wholly understandable reasons 
and for their own political purposes and ours, are redrawing 
congressional lines even outside of the traditional 10-year cycle. If I 
live on Elm Street in any town in America and the ``ins'' redrew the 
seat, I could be put into a district that is 80 percent one party or 
the other and therefore my vote has been effectively removed from me. I 
can't help the 80 percent. The 20 percent don't need me. And so my vote 
in a congressional election really doesn't matter any more.
  Competition in congressional races has declined dramatically over the 
last 40-plus years. In 1946, just over 85 percent of incumbents were 
reelected to the House of Representatives. In 2002 and 2004, close to 
99 percent of incumbents were reelected. In 2004, only 22 contests in 
the entire country were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage 
points. In 2002, 36 House contests were decided by a margin of less 
than 10 percentage points. Thirty-six. That is less than 10 percent of 
the House.
  At the other end of the spectrum, 172 winning candidates in 2004 
either had no major party opposition or had a margin of victory by at 
least 40 percentage points. According to Patrick Basham, a senior 
fellow at the Cato Institute, today, a healthy, unindicted incumbent in 
the House of Representatives stands a 99 percent chance of being 
reelected. Something is wrong with a system where there is more 
turnover in the Soviet politburo than in this House.
  Even looking at the 2006 midterm elections, which many have called a 
watershed, less than 10 percent of the seats in the House changed 
hands. Unfortunately, we know this: The less competitive the election, 
the less likely voters are to get involved.
  The House of Representatives is a truly unique institution. It is the 
only political office that I know about where one cannot be appointed 
or one cannot accede to a seat in the case of a death or resignation. 
Every Member of the House of Representatives has to stand and be 
elected. That is why, when someone dies or resigns in the middle of a 
term, the seat stays vacant here until there is a special election.
  One can be President without being elected. We know President Ford 
was. One can be a Governor, one can be a United States Senator. But 
only here does everyone have to be elected.
  I believe political vulnerability is essential to the health of our 
House, and our current system does not do that. As I said, advanced map 
drawing techniques allow politicians to select their voters instead of 
the voter selecting their leaders. When Members come here from these 
districts that have been gerrymandered, they are good people, but they 
have little incentive really to work across party lines in order to 
reach solutions. As a matter of fact, they have a disincentive because 
if their district is skewed so heavily one way or the other, then the 
election is really in the party primaries, where barely more than a 
third of the people, in most instances, are the highly charged 
partisans, either Democrat or Republican. And so if one comes here 
wanting to work across the aisle, one has to, as we might say in 
Tennessee, watch one's back, because the highly charged partisans don't 
like that.
  When you have a situation like we have in America, where there is and 
must be a middle for all of us to come together and reach solutions, 
when that middle shrinks to the point where we cannot do that, then in 
a multi, everything-society like ours, we are going to create 
polarization, and gridlock will then ensue. That, in part, is what is 
happening.

                              {time}  2100

  The other phenomenon is this drawing of congressional districts under 
a recent Supreme Court ruling any time one can get enough power in one 
State to do so.
  Now, if one wants to conform to the one person-one vote rule based on 
a census, and then is allowed to draw lines based on that census 8 
years later, all you have to go is go to an 8-year old phone book and 
try to call somebody. That, to me, makes no sense. But what happens 
here is a debasing of the voter influence and really a usurpation of 
the power of the people by politicians, of which I am one, and that is 
why I am trying to change it.
  David Winston, who drew the House districts for the Republicans in 
this case after the 1990 United States census, said, ``As a map maker, 
I can have more of an impact on an election than a campaign or the 
candidate. When I as a map maker have more of an impact on an election 
than the voters, the system is out of whack.''
  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had this to say: 
``Democrats get to rip off the public in the States where they control 
and protect their incumbents, and we get to rip off the public in the 
States we control and protect our incumbents. So the public gets ripped 
off in both circumstances. In the long-run, that is a downward spiral 
of isolation.'' That is former Speaker Gingrich.
  David Broder, a well-respected columnist, said this about it: ``At 
the founding of this Republic, House Members were given the shortest 
terms, half the length of the Presidents, one-third that of the 
Senators, to ensure that they would be sensitive to any shifts in 
public opinion. Now they have more job security than the Queen of 
England, and as little need to seek their subjects' assent.''
  Some States, to their credit, have tried to reform their 
redistricting systems, and have failed. California and Ohio are two of 
the most recent examples. Thirteen States have some form of independent 
commission or process that has a part in the drawing of the 
congressional map, and nearly half the States ban mid-decade 
redistricting. However, much more, in my view, needs to be done, and it 
will take Federal action.
  The House of Representatives is a Federal office and article I, 
section 4 of the Constitution gives the Congress the ability to set 
parameters for election to the House. In fact, it is only fair that 
Members come from districts that are derived from using a uniform 
process.
  The Campaign Legal Center, the League of Women Voters, the Council 
For Excellence in Government and other advisory groups have joined 
together with assistance from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to form 
Americans for Redistricting Reform, which will hopefully raise 
awareness of the problem, promote solutions, and serve as a 
clearinghouse of information.
  We have had a bill in, H.R. 543, that we have introduced that would 
mandate to the States that they must have in terms of the congressional 
seats, it doesn't matter, they can do anything with the State senate 
and State house seats that is constitutional, that they put in place an 
independent commission that will draw the congressional district lines 
once every 10 years after the census.
  By the way, Mr. Speaker, I will include for the record Mr. Broader's 
article that was published in the Washington Post, and also an article 
by Gerald Hebert and David Vance on this subject.
  I am not going to take the whole hour, but I wish people, our 
citizens, would realize what is happening to us. The Congress is 
acting, in my view, irrationally. We have not a parliamentary system, 
but a representative system, and yet, time and time again, we see votes 
in committee here in the House and on the board behind me, all the 
Democrats voting one way, all the Republicans vote another.
  I am a Democrat from a southern rural district. It is not logical nor 
rational for me to vote every time with urban Members or urban Members 
to

[[Page H7286]]

vote with me just because we are Democrats. It also makes no sense for 
all the Republicans to vote together in every way all the time.
  You see the Centrist Caucus, a centrist body here, continuing to 
shrink, and, as it does, the polarization, and as Speaker Gingrich 
said, the isolation here becomes more palatable and it makes it far 
more difficult for us to actually reach solutions to the myriad of 
problems that face our country. I don't know how to fix it, other than 
to start where it begins, and that is at the drawing of congressional 
districts process, because otherwise all of us here will be more 
sensitive to either the partisans on the left or the partisans on the 
right, rather than to the overall good of our country.
  In this bill, Congressman Wamp and myself are asking people to give 
up an enormous amount of power. There are not many places where you can 
go and with your friends in the legislature sit down and draw a 
district that you can win without a whole lot of pushback really from 
anybody, but in collusion with the other party. When the Supreme Court 
turned it over to the ``ins,'' they set up a system that after 40-
something years results in exactly what we see.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this bill is an attempt to bring some reason to the 
concept of congressional districts that have more of a community of 
interest than they do Democrat or Republican voters. I know I am 
speaking against myself, and I certainly don't mean for this to reflect 
on any Member here, because the Members are basically themselves 
victims of this system that has grown into being after 40-something 
years of congressional redistricting based on political considerations 
rather than community of interest and so forth. It makes no sense for 
someone on Elm Street at 301 to be in a different congressional 
district from someone on Elm Street that lives at 303. Most communities 
have legislative interests, not individuals, and that is what I am 
afraid we have become victimized by.
  We will be talking some more about this in the future. I think you 
will see more and more articles written about it, because there is, in 
the view of many, a problem, a serious problem, that cannot be fixed 
until we address the core of it.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the articles referred to 
earlier.

                  [From the Roll Call, July 29, 2008]

               Redistricting Must Be Fixed Before Census

                (By J. Gerald Hebert and David G. Vance)

       Partisan abuse of redistricting is one of Congress' 
     dirtiest little Secrets. The outrage over partisan 
     gerrymanders fades well before the next census rolls around, 
     and this travesty of our democracy never gets addressed.
       Backroom deals by both parties have produced bulletproof 
     districts from Florida to California, fueling voter apathy 
     and undermining our democracy. Elections are determined 
     before the voters ever have the chance to go to the polls.
       Tonight, Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) and other Members will 
     take to the House floor to draw attention to the abuses of 
     the redistricting process. Last week, Tanner and Rep. Zach 
     Wamp (R-Tenn.) introduced H.Res. 1365, advocating the use of 
     nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw Congressional 
     districts. This resolution, and an earlier bill to revamp the 
     process, will not endear these Members to many of their 
     colleagues sitting in completely safe districts, virtually 
     assured of reelection after re-election.
       With redistricting abuses on the rise, the public is 
     becoming increasingly aware of the problem. Our organization, 
     the Campaign Legal Center, along with the League of Women 
     Voters, the Council for Excellence in Government and a 
     diverse group of advisory organizations, have founded a new 
     organization called Americans for Redistricting Reform. With 
     financial assistance from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the 
     goal of Americans for Redistricting Reform will be to raise 
     awareness of the problem, promote solutions and serve as a 
     clearinghouse of information and networking. More information 
     can be found on americansforredistrictingreform.org.
       Our organizations see the launch of this group as vitally 
     important work, as our nation prepares for the upcoming 2010 
     Census and another round of redistricting, one that will 
     surely be marked by gross partisan gerrymandering unless 
     there is reform of the redistricting process.
       Redistricting abuses may have evolved into more of an exact 
     science, but the practice is nearly as old as districts 
     themselves. The term ``gerrymandering'' dates back to 1812, 
     when a partisan redistricting in Massachusetts resulted in a 
     district that one newspaper editor observed looked like a 
     salamander and dubbedita ``Gerrymander'' after the state's 
     governor, Elbridge Gerry. Since that time, gerrymanders have 
     taken different forms. Parties have used racial 
     gerrymandering to dilute minority voting strength, partisan 
     gerrymandering to solidify one-party control, and bipartisan 
     gerrymandering to protect Representatives from both parties.
       The post-2000 redistricting cycle saw unprecedented efforts 
     to use redistricting for partisan purposes. Technological 
     advances made it possible to calibrate districts using 
     election data with even greater precision. The result was 
     that the 2002 elections produced the fewest ousted incumbents 
     ever--only four Members were voted out of office. 
     Historically, post-redistricting elections have generally 
     been more competitive because the drawing of new lines 
     mitigates incumbents' advantage by introducing them to a new 
     group of voters. The 2000 redistricting round had the 
     opposite effect.
       As redistricting has become ever more clinical, moderates 
     from both parties have been driven from Congress in droves. 
     In 2002, one of us saw our Representative voted out of office 
     after 16 years as a result of a redistricting in Maryland 
     designed for just that purpose. Rep. Connie Morella was a 
     moderate Republican, popular with colleagues from both 
     parties, who would cross the aisle and her party's 
     leadership. in order to pass common-sense legislation for the 
     good of her constituents and the Nation. As moderates like 
     Morella have disappeared from the halls of Congress, the 
     partisan gridlock has sunk deeper roots into Capitol Hill to 
     the detriment of our democracy.
       Even after the initial round of redistricting following the 
     2000 Census, partisans in some states used mid-decade 
     redistricting, or re-redistricting, to further advance 
     partisan goals. A handful of states attempted to redraw 
     existing, valid district lines. Absent a court order 
     invalidating a redistricting plan, there is unlikely any 
     other purpose that motivates a mid-decade redistricting other 
     than partisan gain.
       Make no mistake, when politicians engage in extreme 
     partisan gerrymandering, it is the voters who suffer. In the 
     case of Texas' mid-decade redistricting, in which one of us 
     represented most of the Congressional delegation's Democrats, 
     the Republican Party gained seats in the short term but the 
     state lost critical seniority when the Democrats regained the 
     majority in the House.
       Texas Democrats who lost their seats in the gerrymander led 
     by then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) would likely have been 
     holding vast power in Congress today, such as Martin Frost, 
     who could be chairing the Rules Committee; Charlie Stenholm, 
     Agriculture; Jim Turner, Homeland Security; and Max Sandlin, 
     a Ways and Means Subcommittee. The junior Republicans from 
     Texas who replaced those powerful incumbents have very little 
     influence in the House. DeLay's scorched-earth policy on re-
     redistricting left citizens of the Lone Star State holding 
     the bag.
       Partisan abuse of redistricting is a shameful blot on our 
     democracy. Politicians have absolutely no business choosing 
     their voters. In a true democracy, voters must choose their 
     politicians. In the 110th Congress, two bills, H.R. 543 and 
     H.R. 2248, have been introduced to overhaul the Nation's 
     redistricting process, but both have beat referred to a 
     subcommittee where they have yet to see the light of day. At 
     the very least, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority 
     Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) owe it to the Nation to see that 
     hearings are held on these bills. The system must be changed, 
     and hearings are the first step.
       The 2010 Census is just around the corner with partisan 
     gerrymanders close at its heels. If we don't move quickly, 
     the train will have left the station yet again and Congress 
     will feign dismay and continue to talk about the need to fix 
     the system the next time around.
                                  ____


                  [The Washington Post, Jun. 26, 2008]

                       Voting's Neglected Scandal

                          (By David S. Broder)

       When Barack Obama decided last week to throw off the 
     constraints on campaign spending that go with the acceptance 
     of public financing, he was rightly criticized for rigging 
     the system in his favor.
       That was a predictable response. For the better part of 
     four decades, the media and public interest groups have 
     focused on campaign spending as the most serious distorting 
     force in our elections.
       Meanwhile, they have paid much less attention to what may 
     well be a larger problem: the way that district lines are 
     drawn to create safe seats for one party or the other, in 
     effect denying voters any choice of representation.
       It is not a new problem. The original gerrymander was a 
     creation of 18th-century Massachusetts, and since then, 
     politicians have been using ever more sophisticated tools to 
     rig the game. With computer technology, their ability to 
     design districts that meet the legal requirement for equal 
     population while guaranteeing their fellow partisans easy 
     passage into office has never been greater.
       In 2002 and 2006, the most recent off-year elections, about 
     nine out of 10 congressional districts were won by more than 
     10 percentage points--a clear sign that the game had been 
     rigged when the lines were drawn in the state legislatures. 
     In the first of those years, only eight incumbents lost; in 
     the second, only 21.
       As scholars have pointed out, the scarcity of real 
     competition in nearly all districts has many consequences--
     all of them bad. It makes legislators less responsive to 
     public

[[Page H7287]]

     opinion, since they are in effect safe from challenge in 
     November. It shifts the competition from the general election 
     to the primary, where candidates of more extreme views can 
     hope to attract support from passionately ideological voters 
     and exploit the low turnouts typical of those primaries.
       Gerrymandered, one-party districts tend to send highly 
     partisan representatives to the House or the legislature, 
     contributing to the gridlock in government that is so 
     distasteful to voters.
       These are familiar complaints in academic and journalistic 
     circles. And this week, another count was added to the 
     indictment with a report from the Democratic Leadership 
     Council titled ``Gerrymandering the Vote.''
       It makes the point that these rigged districts have the 
     effect of suppressing the vote.
       The numbers are startling. In both 2002 and 2006, voter 
     turnout in districts where the winner received at least 80 
     percent of the votes struggled to reach 125,000. Turnout in 
     the districts where the margin was 20 percent or less 
     exceeded 200,000.
       If there were some other device that was reducing voter 
     turnout by almost 40 percent, you could be sure it would be 
     the chief target for reformers. The ballot anomalies and the 
     ``voter suppression'' tactics that marked the Florida 
     election of 2000 affected far fewer people than that.
       The study by the DLC's Marc Dunkelman found big variations 
     among the states in the competitiveness of their House 
     districts. The average margin in Massachusetts in 2006 was 
     almost 75 percent. Next door in New Hampshire, it was under 5 
     percent.
       Dunkelman calculated the potential turnout increase for 
     individual states, if their district lines were redrawn to 
     emphasize competitiveness. The gains ranged as high as 59 
     percent for Louisiana and 49 percent for New York. Other 
     states that could experience much higher participation with 
     redrawn districts include West Virginia, Virginia, 
     California, North Carolina, Alabama, New Jersey, Mississippi, 
     Georgia, Hawaii and New Mexico.
       Dunkelman estimates that competitive districts might 
     attract 3 million more voters in California and almost 2 
     million more in New York. Overall, 11 million more Americans 
     might show up at the polls, decreasing our chronically low 
     voting participation rates.
       How to change the lines? Two states--Iowa and Washington--
     have instituted nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting 
     systems, and they have been rewarded with much more 
     competitive House races. So it can be done.
       But the politicians are unlikely to do it on their own. 
     Only if the voters demand reform is there a chance it will 
     come.

                          ____________________