Redistricting 101: Competitive vs. Safe Districts and Balancing

The US Constitution requires each state to redraw the boundaries of congressional districts every ten years based on the results of the most recent national census. Like other states, Arizona takes this opportunity to redraw the boundaries of its state legislative districts as well. For decades, the partisan legislatures used this authority to draw so-called ‘safe’ districts that ensured they retained power, regardless of the proportion of their support among voters or the impact it had on the lives of our citizens or our democracy itself. At the end of the last century, Arizonans had had enough of the poor governance that resulted. And, as our Framers fully anticipated in The Federalist Papers, The People took the steps necessary to take back the power they had entrusted to their representatives. They passed Proposition 106. Arizona’s Proposition 106 required language be added to the Arizona constitution to establish an Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) charged with redrawing the state’s congressional and legislative district boundaries to create “fair and competitive” districts using six criteria. So how do ‘competitive’ districts differ from ‘safe’ districts? Why was that such an important distinction to the voters? And how should the IRC and the citizens determine whether a new map they’re considering is truly competitive or not? A safe district is one in which a candidate of a given party is almost certainly assured to win. This is usually because the borders have been drawn to include an overwhelming number of voters who reliably tend to vote for that candidate’s party. On the other hand, the outcome of an election in a competitive district is not so certain and could go to either of the top contenders. Political parties (and incumbents) like safe districts because they can retain power in the legislature with minimal effort and expenditures. To win a competitive district takes much more of both. It must be recognized that safe districts are by their nature inherently dysfunctional:

• The parties can run sub-standard candidates (ones the party bosses can more easily control). No matter how inept or unsuited, they still win election to election anyway.
• Qualified opponents have no incentive to run. Why bother? They’re almost certain to lose, and who wants that on their resume?
• Majority candidates don’t need to offer innovative policies or proposals that are debated in public. As long as they don’t make waves with the majority, they hold onto their seat.
• Majority candidates have no need to address the interests of the district and certainly NOT those of the minority. It’s better to do nothing than to stir things up.
• The Public quickly becomes disenchanted because the new legislature is unresponsive to their issues. It governs poorly; i.e., it fails to deliver the governmental policies and services needed for constituents and communities to prosper.
• The Public disengages from the political process. Why bother paying attention or insisting on results when nothing changes? Politicians are all crooks, right, so why support them?
• The Public (for both parties) doesn’t vote. Why bother when the outcome is already known? And when they don’t vote, that affects all the races both up and down the ballot, from the president to school board. They essentially take their voice out of the democratic process.

The majority of voters in safe districts are content, but they never have a reason to push their legislators to do better, so things stagnate and people just get used to the way they are. Voters in safe districts have few, if any, meaningful options, governance suffers, change is slow, distrust of government is high, and apathy and discouragement take over. What happens in these districts is exactly what the electorate in 2000 voted to try to stop with Proposition 106. On the other hand, in competitive districts, all of these traits are reversed. To win a district, the parties must put forth their best candidates, those who are familiar with the needs of the district and will put forth innovative ideas and programs to resolve them, those who listen to the voters and respond to them with policies they can defend in debate. When that happens, the voters become engaged in the political process, their government, their communities, and their elections. They vote in greater numbers and expect more of their elected officials (who are consequently more capable of delivering). All of that leads to more effective and responsive governance. But you only get that when you have districts that are competitive. Unfortunately, political partisanship is not evenly spread across the state. As a practical matter, no matter how hard an IRC struggles there will always be some safe districts on the maps they draw. Because of that and because they want to feel they’re being fair, there’s a tendency for the commissioners to view their work as a task of ‘balancing’ safe districts across the entire state so the other party doesn’t seem to have an inordinate advantage. They feel they can claim they’ve done their best if the number of safe districts for each party is the same (or if theirs has one more). So hypothetically, if there were 14 safe districts for Republicans and 14 safe districts for Democrats and two competitive districts in the state, the IRC (and the political parties) would say that’s balanced and so it’s fair. But what that really means is that there are 28 dysfunctional districts continuing to have their negative impacts, corroding our democracy and sowing discontent. That’s exactly the kind of districts the pre-2000 legislatures drew and that voters for Proposition 106 wanted to be rid of. To be a truly competitive map, the number of districts that are internally competitive must be far more than the number of safe districts. Where safe districts are unavoidable –and there will be places where that’s the case – the numbers of districts that are safe for each political party should balance out as evenly as possible. In short, competitiveness is a test of fairness conducted within each proposed district, not a test of balance across the entire state.