Testimonial Summary of Tom Brunell

Testimonial Summary of Tom Brunell

1) From the Voters’ First initiative, the provision to draw maps that match the underlying partisanship of the state is terrific. This cuts right to the heart of the problem (gerrymandering), though measuring the underlying partisanship is where the rubber is going to meet the road. I think taking a handful of recent statewide elections and averaging the vote percentages for the two major parties is not a bad way to go. There would have to be some selection criteria however, to deal with the occasional statewide blow-out election.

2) Ohio uses fairly stringent protections for keeping counties and municipalities whole. This does make redistricting more difficult, which can be a good thing. However it is pretty clear that even with these restrictions, maps can be drawn in Ohio that clearly favor one party. I would severely loosen these restrictions – perhaps something like “keep counties and cities whole when practicable.” Communities of interest are ideological, not geographical. So assuming that voters that reside in the same county want the same things from their state or federal government is wrong. I looked at the 2012 presidential vote by county in Ohio and while there were a handful of counties that broke around 70-30 for one candidate or the other, most counties were won pretty narrowly. Partisan fairness is far more important than keeping counties or cities whole.

3) I like the smaller commission proposed in SJR- 1, rather than the larger one from the Voters First Initiative. Redistricting is political and I would much rather have partisans draw the maps so we know who to credit/blame. I totally understand the desire to make the process “non-partisan” or have “neutral commissioners” but regardless of what map gets adopted, there will be winners and losers. When you lose at the hands of “neutral, non-partisans” it doesn’t feel any better, in fact it usually turns out worse, because there will always be the uncertainty about whether or not the commission was dominated by partisanship. Put differently, I’d rather see the wolf eat the sheep than wonder if there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing behind it.

4) I would recommend lowering the allowable level of population deviations for state legislative districts to either zero, or as close to zero as the commission feels comfortable with (+/- 1 or 2 percent?). Population deviations do facilitate keeping more cities and counties whole at least theoretically, but the problem is deviations are often used for partisan purposes. The controlling party will underpopulate districts that favor their candidates, which means the districts for the opposition will tend to be overpopulated.

5) I would recommend against adopting any provision encouraging more competitive districts.

Virtually everyone thinks that when it comes to elections, we absolutely need more competition. Voters, elected officials, media pundits all agree. I disagree at least in part. Its natural for us to want more competition – we are Americans and the free market is a great thing. However, the marketplace analogy does not apply to electoral politics. We rarely reflect on the potential downsides to electoral competition. It turns out that the costs associated with using redistricting to induce electoral competition are non-trivial – almost certainly far higher than any of the alleged benefits that competition might bring.

First, one of the biggest problems with single member district (SMD) electoral systems is the prevalence of “wasted votes.” In a sense, every voter who casts a losing ballot in a congressional or state legislative race has wasted a vote. The candidate they voted for lost and so their vote has no direct effect on representation. Competitive elections waste the most votes. An election won by a single vote means just less than half the voters have wasted their vote. Losing voters, I have demonstrated in my scholarly work, are less likely to trust in government; less likely to approve of their representative. If a district is won by a single vote, we have maximized the number of wasted votes, the number of losing voters. This is not a democratic “good”.

Moreover, a provision for competition works directly against the partisan fairness provision. The idea behind drawing competitive districts is that a candidate from either party can win in the district. Assuming there are macro partisan tides (and there are) when we have lots of competitive districts it is possible, even likely, that one party’s candidates can win all or at least most of these contests. This could lead to very lopsided state delegations that are far from representative of the underlying partisanship of the state. So partisan fairness implies a relatively stable delegation in terms of partisanship, whereas a whole slew of competitive districts implies that there could be large swings in terms of the partisan make-up of the congressional delegation or the state legislature. These two principles are not compatible with one another.

Let primary elections be competitive. Primary elections are more interesting and regardless of who wins, at least most of the folks are going to have someone from their preferred party representing them. The key feature of elections is for a representative to have at least a small sense of worry about getting reelected and that can sense can be generated at the primary stage just as well as the general election.