“Whose district am I in, anyway?” Exploring gerrymanded territory with the March on Harrisburg
By Teddy Rube, National Organizer
This post is part of a series on the March On Harrisburg, a non-partisan, volunteer run movement supporting three democracy bills in the Pennsylvania State Legislature. You can read more about the March in our earlier blog post.
Last Saturday and Sunday, MAYDAY’s campaign director Chris and I joined activists for the first two days of their intrepid 100-day March on Harrisburg in support of three anti-corruption reform bills in the Pennsylvania Legislature. We marched through all sorts of interesting features: through towns, over roads, along train lines, across bridges, rivers, and hiking trails. What we couldn’t see, though, was that we were constantly crossing and recrossing (and recrossing!) some of the most ingeniously gerrymandered electoral districts in the country.
At the end of Sunday’s grueling 15-mile march, Maddie Whitehill, one of the March’s coordinators, sat down with me to talk about Pennsylvania’s gerrymandering woes.
“I’m exhausted, though it’s not because of the walking,” she said, laughing. “As we marched, we were trying to figure out, what districts we were passing through? It should be an easy question – in a democracy!” She shook her head. “But no! It’s a complete and utter nightmare.”
Maddie’s frustration isn’t surprising, given that Pennsylvania’s electoral districts, both for Congress and the state’s legislature, have been consistently ranked as some of the most gerrymandered in the country. In Pennsylvania, state legislators are responsible for drawing district lines, and invariably, legislators draw lines to benefit themselves and their parties at the expense of the democratic system.
“In this state, we’re walking through districts that have been so gerrymandered that two houses right next to each other are in separate districts,” Maddie pointed out. Chris and I experienced this first hand. During the 26.5 miles we walked over two days, we crossed 11 Congressional district lines (but just through 5 districts), 8 state senate district lines (for only 4 districts), 17 state house lines (through 11 districts).
Even looking at the maps from the comfort of my computer, it’s dizzying to keep track of. The districts we walked through are beyond mangled, with bizarre angles, undulating curves, and chunks ripped out of them, clearly designed to stuff voters into a specific district (called “packing”) or to spread them out, called “cracking”) (The process is summarized well in this hilarious (and NSFW) video by Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver). You can puzzle out the district lines yourself, below:
Our route through from Philadelphia (bottom right) to Collegeville (top left) through Pennsylvania’s State House districts
Our route through Pennsylvania’s State Senate districts
Our route through southeastern PA’s congressional districts, with the infamously mangled 7th district highlighted in yellow
Big Money and Gerrymandering
Critics of reform often point out that gerrymandering has been a part of politics since the Republic was founded, and they’re right. However, what’s changed is the huge amount of money that’s poured into our political system since 2010′s Citizens United decision and is now dedicated to intensifying gerrymandering’s impact.
“People in, Money Out” is March on Harrisburg’s slogan, and for the Harrisburg marchers, gerrymandering is inextricably linked with the issues of big money corruption plaguing Pennsylvania and the country. As Maddie described, gerrymandering in Pennsylvania is a tool of wealthy politicians and parties to protect incumbents at the expense of the actual voices of voters in the districts.
“Right now, these districts defend politicians who already are in office. It’s extremely difficult for someone without money to run in a cracked district, where voters are separated out. You might have to travel across the state in order to reach voters.” In districts like Pennsylvania’s 7th, which at its furthest protuberances stretches nearly 80 miles, wealthy candidates who can pay to get their message around the district—whether by personally traveling, or through TV and other advertising—have an immense advantage over candidates with less funding. New candidates, unfamiliar with the distant and often disparate communities in a gerrymandered district, face a huge uphill battle.
Gerrymandering also allows the leadership of political parties to consolidate their own power at the expense of even their own voters—and they’ve been doing it for years. Maddie told me about a state legislator, Fred Taylor, who had challenged his party leadership in 1990. To neutralize Taylor in the 1992 elections, the Democratic leadership redrew his district, Pennsylvania’s 51st, to specifically exclude his house. Not to be deterred, Taylor bought a new home and moved into the new district, only to have—surprise!—the leadership redraw the maps around his house again, leaving him out.
In 1992, that type of targeting was considered egregious, and the story a unique anecdote. However, as mapping technology—and the funds to pay for it—have grown in leaps and bounds, it’s become routine. In the past few years in Pennsylvania, Maddie said, “political parties have started to use software to draw what is most likely to get them elected.” This mapping software helps explain why the districts we walked through are so minutely drawn.
Rise of the robots? Detail of Pennsylvania’s 7th district, drawn with a software-generated precision.
The problem’s only likely to worsen, Maddie told me, “since ISPs (internet service providers) can now sell your internet data,” referring to the repeal in April of federal internet privacy rules that prevented ISPs from selling online browsers’ private information. With the privacy rules repealed, it’s probable that politicians and parties with deep pockets will be paying telecom companies hand over fist for the ability to minutely draw around your yard, based on everything from the banana peels in your garbage to that book you ordered on Amazon last year. It’s gerrymandering à la Fred Taylor, but on an a staggering scale.
(Fun fact: After Trump signed the privacy repeal bill in April, Salon published a great article about how big data will worsen gerrymandering. The congressional districts they profiled? Pennsylvania’s 6th and 7th.)
Marching for Solutions
March on Harrisburg describes gerrymandering as “a distortion of the relationship between citizen and government,” and they’re right. Politicians hand-picking their own voters, with the help of complex software and lots of money, isn’t how representative democracy is supposed to work. Fortunately, activists like the Harrisburg marchers are talking the talk and walking the walk.
One of the three bills the March is supporting is SB 22/HB 722, which would create an independent redistricting commission. The details are complex, but the March on Harrisburg and their major ally Fair Districts PA feel that this is the best shot Pennsylvania has at beating gerrymandering in decades.
Members of the March’s legislative committee met with every single state representative and senator in the lead-up to the march. Sean Leber, March on Harrisburg’s web designer who also participated in the lobbying meetings, told me that the bill has strong bipartisan support in both houses of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. Much of the pushback, Sean and Maddie told me, comes from the leaders of both parties, who for obvious reasons don’t want to surrender the ability to gerrymander their way into power.
After marching 100 miles through dozens of district lines, the March on Harrisburg will steamroll into the state capitol on Monday, energized and ready to make the case to legislators that gerrymandering needs to be stopped. You can follow their activities on Facebook or their website
Gerrymandering can often seem like an abstract problem -- just funny shapes on a map. But March on Harrisburg, with its unique citizen-led trek across some of Pennsylvania’s most dizzying electoral borders, is helping make the issue gerrymandering – and it’s relationship to the scourge of money in politics – a concrete reality.