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Hailemichael Teklai

Recognizing MAUP, Gerrymandering and Compactness within the Political System

Within the last quarter of the twentieth century, social settings in American neighborhoods have become increasingly homogeneous. Individuals have begun to congregate in areas based upon common ideas largely related to political views, economic affiliation, education level and cultural beliefs. It is believed that this type of sorting where people gather in communities to live around others with similar interest is thought to occur naturally. However, within the last 20 years, this natural phenomenon has been exploited by political gains, resulting in a vast number of counties within the United States to be split along political lines, and seemingly segregating democrats from republicans and nearly causing the independent swing voters to vanish. Prior to 1976, Americans lived in counties where political elections were largely decided by close margins. Beginning in the early 1980s, the political geography of US counties began to change, segregating democrats from republicans, and eventually creating the existence of political counties. Counties of states in the northeast and along the west coast tend to be primarily democratic in nature and are often made up of cities dominated by high tech jobs, high levels of education, and citizens interested in individualistic endeavors. In direct opposition, counties within the southern states and the Midwest tend to be dominated by republican values, where people tend to be hold more traditional jobs, attend church, participate in community projects and are more family oriented.

Prior to 1990, both high-tech and low-tech cities alike were considered slightly more liberal compared to the rest of the country. However, within the last 20 years, high-tech cities have become increasingly more liberal and low-tech cities have become increasing more conservative. This seemingly segregation of political views along counties line has resulted in a lackluster mix of democratic and republican cities within the U.S. Once these counties and cities became tipped to either democratic or republican ways, the spread of political views began to increase as people moved away from areas where they were considered to be the political minority to counties and cities where they became the political majority. The consequence of shuffling to areas of political affiliation combined with gerrymandering has increased political homogeneity within counties and cities, and resulted in political homgeneity in adjacent counties and cities as well. A major drawback of this political reorganization among county lines has resulted in organizations no longer turning inwards for rational discussions among its community memembers to resolve issues that affect the greater good of the public.

Politicians have exploited gerrymander along with modifiable area unit problem (MAUP) for political gains. There are two major problems associated with MAUP: the scale effect and the zone effect. Aggregated data can be misleading at large scales. Averages summed up from small scale do not reveal all of the details. However aggregated data shown at a smaller scale displays all of the details. The Big Sort article demonstrates the scale effect. In a large scale, counties split among political affiliation, give the appearances that those counties are composited of mainly one type of political group. It also gives the appearance that those people living in blue counties are living in high tech counties/cities and have a higher education level compared to those people living in red counties. However when you view the data at a smaller scale, it is clear that these counties are composed of both republican and democrats, and are composed of mixed levels of education and professions.

The zone effect is the opposite of the scale effect. The zone affect is where the scale is fixed, but the aggregated unit changes. The aggregated data will differ when the same analysis is applied to the data that was gathered using different grid sizes and measurements. By using the zone effect, Politicians can change the apperance of counties and surrounding cities to make them appear as political stronghold. This often has the result of influencing the counties political decisions. Gerrymandering is known as using the same data while changing the aggregate unit/changing the district shape. At a large scale the counties and adjacent counties appear a certain way, but differ in lower scale. Based on who has the largest population in those counties and cities, this effect can influence state and national election results.

MAUP can also have major effects on statistical results as well. Not only can results become biased, but data can be manipulated to show a more desired outcome. It can take both high and low values, and summed to averages which can be misleading when looked at different scale level.

Architecture of political boundaries has been at the heart of the political process in the United States. Early in the last century United States Supreme Court recognized compactness as the desirable method in assessing the constitutionality of gerrymander voting districts because it attempts to quantify the geometric shape of a district often to a perfect shape and measure the extend of the shape from its center. It satisfied the three criteria of political district plans: anonymity of voters, efficient clustering, and insensitive to scale regardless of population density and number of districts. Also because it limits MAUP due to its insensitive to scale effect and zone effect.

Politician behind closed doors have been crafting racial motivated gerrymanders to diminish representation of blacks in the state and federal legislatures and altering the design districts for political gains. The following are two examples of gerrymandering both racially and politically motivated. During Gomillion vs. Lightfoot 364 U.S. 339 (1960) the Supreme Court struck down the political redistricting of the city of Tuskegee on the basis it was racially motivated. Prior to 2003 Texas redistricting the congressional delegation was comprised of 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans; after 2004 elections there were 11 Democrats and 21 Republicans. States with more to gain often alter the design of their political districts and the State of Maryland is the latest to do so for the 2012 congressional election.

Despite its importance in adjudicating gerrymandering claims and reapportionment of districts, the United States Supreme Court has stayed away from referencing compactness over the last half century in order to promote minority representation and partisan outcome. Minority representation is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court canonized all of the criteria from the 1901 and 1911 reapportionment legislation that represented fair election pass by congress, but over years left compactness out. As consequences voting districts are less compact for State House of Representatives and Senate sites than counties were in the 1960 according to Buckwalter and Wilson. Voting districts are spread out because of gerrymandering; as a result they are closer to being line segments rather compacted shapes such as circles or hexagons. Although in the sixties computers were hailed by political scientists as an impartial method of political redistricting, it actually has caused the opposite effect. The consistent delineation of political voting districts has become fundamental and systematic with the advent of computers and software. There are political science authors that state consideration for minority representation and partisan outcome should hold higher precedence while others argued that geometric regularity prevents factional manipulation by incumbents. Since traditional districting principles includes compactness, and equality not because they are constitutionally required, but because they are objective factors; therefore creating a political geometric structure where elections are competitive, fair and likely to produce minority representation is the best way to go. Otherwise irregular districts favor incumbents that have high budget campaigns because of increased canvassing and media cost. In irregular districts, Politician can play on voters’ ignorance due to confusion of voting districts, lower voter turnout, shifting territorial or population and disrupting communities. All the examples above are some of the reasons why Politician favor lobbyists over the interest of the people.

At the moment there is no standardized compactness measurement that could be used in jurisprudence. In the past several were suggested such as dispersion, perimeters, population and miscellaneous. Each measurement captured a slightly different geometric shape every time it was used; therefore it’s arbitrary to select a particular compactness metric as the standard for accepting or rejecting a district boundary. In the end all of these measurements failed because they did not account for population distribution, geographic size and intractability.

However the newly suggested Relative Proximity Index (RPI) measurement by Fryer and Holden does take population distribution and geographic size into consideration and therefore should implemented for political district plans. Calculating the RPI is a two step process where population and topography is normalized. The first step is to calculate the numerator, the sum of the square distance between nodes. The second step is to calculate the denominator in a similar fashion to the numerator but measuring topography.

Since the RPI calculates specific state baseline, the size of the state and the population density cannot alter the index even when the distance between two nodes or population increases. The RPI allows for meaningful comparisons across states. It does not assume that voters are uniformly distributed across political districts. More importantly RPI would eliminate gerrymandering based on race, limit winner-take all elections and maybe create an opportunity for other political party. According to Buckwalter and Wilson index comparisons in Pennsylvania showed that political districts are remarkably less compact than counties in the sixties. District compactness has deteriorated over the years because it has been difficult to measure than the standard number of representatives per district, the number of voters per district, and because little evidence supports compactness index. However a few studies: Measuring the Compactness of Political Districting Plans, and Trends of Political Districting in Pennsylvania: An Analysis Using Shape and Boundary Configuration Indexes have shown methods can be derived that blend theoretical concepts of compactness and political requirements.

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