The changing demographic, legal, and technological contexts of political representation
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Edited by William A. V. Clark, University of California, Los Angeles, CA (received for review August 22, 2005)
Abstract
Three developments have created challenges for political representation in the U.S. and particularly for the use of territorially based representation (election by district). First, the demographic complexity of the U.S. population has grown both in absolute terms and in terms of residential patterns. Second, legal developments since the 1960s have recognized an increasing number of groups as eligible for voting rights protection. Third, the growing technical capacities of computer technology, particularly Geographic Information Systems, have allowed political parties and other organizations to create election districts with increasingly precise political and demographic characteristics. Scholars have made considerable progress in measuring and evaluating the racial and partisan biases of districting plans, and some states have tried to use Geographic Information Systems technology to produce more representative districts. However, case studies of Texas and Arizona illustrate that such analytic and technical advances have not overcome the basic contradictions that underlie the American system of territorial political representation.
Footnotes
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↵ * E-mail: benjamin.forest{at}dartmouth.edu.
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Author contributions: B.F. designed research, performed research, and wrote the paper.
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This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
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Abbreviations: GIS, Geographic Information Systems; IRC, Arizona's Independent Redistricting Commission; TLC, Texas Legislative Council.
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↵ † Strictly speaking, the critical issue is the diversity of voters rather than the diversity of the population per se. Voting rights litigation considers total population, voting age population, and voting age population by citizenship.
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↵ ‡ I base my arguments in this section on >50 interviews I conducted with staff members in the Department of Justice, software vendors, legislators, and legislative staff members in nine states in 2001–2003.
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↵ § The TLC is a nonpartisan state agency that provides various technical services to the state legislature, including the maintenance and redesign of the REDAPPL system. The legislature, not the TLC, creates redistricting plans. Nothing in this article should be taken as a criticism of the TLC's highly professional and knowledgeable staff.
- Copyright © 2005, The National Academy of Sciences
