Dont Blame Redistricting for Uncompetitive Elections

“Here is a telling statistic. One hundred fifty-three of California’s congressional and legislative seats were up in the last election, and not one, I repeat, not one, changed parties. What kind of democracy is that?” With those words in his 2005 State of the State address, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced a proposal to reform the electoral process in the Golden State. The problem with California's congressional and legislative elections, according to Schwarzenegger, is that the Democratic majority in the Legislature has used its control over redistricting to maximize the number of Democratic seats by packing Republican voters into as few districts as possible. It's called gerrymandering, and it has been going on since the days of Elbridge Gerry, the 19th-century Massachusetts politician whose political mapmaking skills gave birth to the term. The difference today is that 21st-century politicians have far more sophisticated mapmaking tools than Gerry. Computer programs allow legislators to use data on voting patterns and demographic characteristics that are broken down to the city-block level (Monmonier 2001). The result, according to Schwarzenegger and other critics of current redistricting practices, is that most seats are safe for one party or the other and it is almost impossible for the minority party to threaten th