What is redistricting, and why does it matter to you? Read our FAQ for a clear explanation
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Congressional redistricting sparks fear in Wyandotte County
Wyandotte County is casting a wary eye as the Kansas Legislature prepares to draw new congressional district maps. The largest Democratic and minority stronghold in Kansas fears Republican plans for the county.
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Fear of redistricting rises as Wyandotte County braces for Republican push for power
What is redistricting, and why does it matter to you? Read our FAQ for a clear explanation
Is Kansas’ redistricting method the best? Here are pros and cons of other systems
Vote in our poll: How should redistricting be done in Wyandotte and Johnson Counties?
Q: Before redistricting, there’s reapportionment. What’s that?
A: It’s the process that determines how many seats in the U.S. House each state receives.
The number is fixed at 435 by law. Every 10 years, the census counts the population across the whole country, including in each state. Those numbers then determine how seats in the House are apportioned or, in other words, whether states gain or lose seats — or keep the same number.
Every state has at least one representative. The largest states, such as California and New York, have dozens.
Kansas has four representatives and Missouri has eight. Neither gained nor lost seats following the 2020 Census.
Q: What is redistricting?
A: It is the process used by state and local governments to draw boundaries for governing bodies. The exact methods can vary dramatically, depending on the state and the office, but it happens once a decade for many positions.
While many factors go into how districts are drawn, the most important is population. Districts typically must contain a certain number of people to ensure everyone is represented equally.
Q: Why does redistricting actually matter?
A: It matters because it determines who represents you. By taking place regularly, usually every 10 years, it also ensures that state legislators and members of Congress all represent about the same number of people.
Q: Why does redistricting happen every 10 years?
A: It is tied to new population data from the U.S. Census, which is conducted during the first year of each new decade. Federal officials provide states with new information about how many people live there and where they live.
State officials — often state lawmakers — then use the data in redistricting. For state and federal offices, redistricting happens in the two years after the census and must typically be completed before the next even-year election. This time, that’s 2022.
Q: How does redistricting work in Kansas?
A: It works mostly like the normal legislative process. New district maps for Congress, the state House, the state Senate and the state Board of Education are drafted and debated like any other bill.
If the Legislature approves new maps, the governor can sign, veto or allow the maps to become law without a signature — just like a normal bill. If the governor vetoes a map, a two-thirds majority vote of the House and the Senate can override the veto.
Once maps are approved, the Kansas Supreme Court reviews them to determine whether they are valid. If they are, they become law. If not, the process repeats itself: The Legislature must pass new maps and the Supreme Court must review them.
Q: How does redistricting work in Missouri?
A: Missouri uses two methods, one for state legislative districts and another for U.S. House seats.
For state legislative districts, two citizen commissions — one for the House and another for the Senate — draft proposed maps. The commissions, appointed by the governor, are supposed to be independent. In practice, they are often filled with partisans and have historically deadlocked along party lines, leaving the maps to be drawn by appellate judges.
Congressional maps are passed through the normal legislative process, in which the General Assembly passes a bill and the governor can sign or veto it.
Q: What are the rules or requirements in redistricting?
A: States have a lot of power to set their own guidelines and rules, but not total power.
There are a number of foundational rules that reflect a body of court decisions and laws, principally Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That part of the law prohibits racially discriminatory district boundaries.
Another key element is “one person, one vote.” This is the principle that everyone’s vote should carry equal weight, meaning that all districts in a state must have approximately the same number of people. “One person, one vote” was enshrined in a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s.
Lawmakers and judges have also held that whenever possible, districts should be drawn with “communities of interest” in mind. It is a somewhat amorphous concept that means districts should be composed of areas and people sharing similar social, economic and other characteristics.
In the past, Kansas has used guidelines that describe communities of interest, in part, as “social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and economic interests common to the population of the area.” Missouri has said it should be a goal to preserve “long-standing communities of interest based on social, cultural, ethnic, and economic similarities.”
Q: What happens if Kansas or Missouri doesn’t successfully complete the redistricting process?
A: If the redistricting process breaks down, it threatens the ability of residents to have constitutional representation. In other words, if maps aren’t adjusted to account for changes in population, they are no longer constitutional because they don’t provide equal protection under the law, as required by the U.S. Constitution.
In general, if that happens, residents can sue in federal court. Those lawsuits can end with federal judges drawing their own districts, though they sometimes use maps that lawmakers previously considered. Judges can move quickly, especially if an election or candidate filing deadline is approaching.
In Missouri, if citizen commissions fail to approve maps setting new state Senate and House districts, the Missouri Supreme Court appoints a panel of appeals court judges to draw new maps.
Q: What is gerrymandering?
A: Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district boundaries to give someone or something — usually a candidate or political party — an advantage in future elections. Gerrymandered maps can sometimes result in bizarrely shaped districts, a sign that lines have been drawn to exclude or include specific neighborhoods.
Some gerrymandering is illegal under federal law. The Voting Rights Act prohibits districts that are racially discriminatory, for instance. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal courts shouldn’t intervene to stop purely partisan gerrymandering.
The term “gerrymander” originated in 1812, when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a bill that created a long, thin salamander-like state Senate district that split apart a political stronghold of the Federalist Party. It gave rival Democratic-Republicans an advantage in the following elections.
This story was originally published November 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
