Reapportionment (Update)

• Author: J. Morgan Kousser
• Pages: 2136-2138

Page 2136

In 1991, reapportionment and redistricting were the most open, democratic, and racially egalitarian in American history. A series of Supreme Court decisions beginning with SHAW V. RENO in 1993, however, insured that the 2001 redistricting would be completely different.

The 1982 amendments to the VOTING RIGHTS ACT and the Court's interpretation of them guaranteed minority groups unprecedented influence over redistricting in the 1990s. When Congress in 1981?1982 considered requiring proof of only a racially discriminatory effect, rather than a racially discriminatory intent, to void state or local election laws, critics warned that this amendment would lead inexorably to racial GERRYMANDERING and drives for proportional representation for minority groups. Congress adopted it anyway, and in an authoritative 1982 U.S. SENATE report, it directed the U.S. Department of Justice not to allow states and localities in the Deep South and scattered areas throughout the country to put into force laws that had racially discriminatory effects. The Justice Department therefore became an active ally of minority voters during the 1990s redistricting.

In the most important VOTING RIGHTS decision of the 1980s, Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), Supreme Court Justice WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, JR., writing for the Court, sustained the new effect standard. Drawing on the 1982 Senate report and testimony from hearings on the Voting Rights Act, Brennan ruled that if a minority group was sufficiently large and geographically compact to dominate an electoral district, and if voting in the area was racially polarized, then states and localities had to draw districts that would enable minority voters to elect candidates of their choice. In 1991, however, redistricting planners largely disregarded the compactness requirement because "compactness" was notoriously difficult to define?Brennan had not even tried to define it, and Congress in 1989 had rejected a compactness standard for congressional districts.

To facilitate the 1991 redistricting, the U.S. Census Bureau rapidly made population and ethnic data, already keyed to voting precincts, widely available in machine-readable form. Ethnic and interest groups, as well as factions of the POLITICAL PARTIES, individual politicians, and members of the general public were given access to computers and software that made drawing districts for local, state, and congressional seats quick and easy. Many of them drafted competing redistricting plans and took vigorous parts in hearings and debates. Organizations representing African...