The multiple hierarchical legislatures in representative democracy

Multiple hierarchical models of representative democracies in which, for instance, voters elect county representatives, county representatives elect district representatives, district representatives elect state representatives and state representatives a president, reduces the number of electors a representative is answerable for, and therefore, considering each level separately, these models could come closer to direct democracy. In this paper we show that worst case policy bias increases with the number of hierarchical levels. This also means that the opportunities of a gerrymanderer increase in the number of hierarchical levels

The Consent of the Governed

The Consent of the Governed is a Kolbe Fellowship project investigating gerrymandering through the lens of mathematics, Supreme Court litigation, and the potential for redistricting reform. It was produced as a five-episode podcast during the summer of 2020; this paper is the transcription of the podcast script. The project begins with an analysis of the impact of gerrymandering on the composition of the current U.S. House of Representatives. It then investigates the arguments and stories of Supreme Court gerrymandering cases in the past twenty years within their political contexts, with a focus on the Court\u27s reaction to different mathematical methods to measure partisan gerrymandering. The project also looks at the potential for state-level redistricting reform, including through state supreme court litigation and citizen-led ballot initiatives. Listen to the podcast

This Is Where We Draw the Line

From George Washington's first presidential veto to the present day, redistricting issues have been highly controversial in the U.S. Gerrymandering, the act of manipulating district lines to grant someone an unfair advantage during elections, has caused the American society to become increasingly diverse, and it deprives the citizens of fundamental democratic rights. Independent redistricting commissions, which replace biased legislative redistricting, have become the premier institutional solution to the problem of partisan and racial gerrymandering, and initiatives to implement these commissions have skyrocketed in recent years. However, in awe of this evidently perfect solution to one of America’s most significant threats to democracy, most people seem to overlook, or even ignore, essential democratic principles. The independent redistricting commission is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; it might appear as the ideal way to construct the act of redistricting, but, in reality, it deprives American citizens of their fundamental democratic rights

A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting

Provides a detailed overview of states' rules and processes for redrawing federal, state, and local legislative districts. Illustrates possible motives behind redistricting, effects on elections, implications for legislation, and reform recommendations

Choosing electoral rules: theory and evidence from US cities

This paper studies the choice of electoral rules, in particular, the question of minority representation. Majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules. With the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by US cities (particularly in the South), we show why majorities tend to adopt "winner-take-all" city-wide rules (at-large elections) in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small. In this case, for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking to concede representation to voters from minority-elected districts. However, as the minority becomes larger (closer to a fifty-fifty split), the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority-packed districts. Single-member district rules serve this purpose. We show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model