Academics, policymakers, and judges alike almost universally agree
that local subdivision preservation and compactness serve essential roles in
redistricting. They often argue—and other times accept as given—that these
criteria simultaneously protect against partisan gerrymanders and ensure
nonpartisan communities receive the representation they deserve.
This support is a normative and practical puzzle. It is well established
both that local governments and their subdividing lines often create
segregation and inequality and that compact communities reflect the same
issues. Indeed, existing empirical research also finds that these criteria
undermine partisan fairness and competitiveness—the stated goals of election
law reform.
This Article shows that these flaws, when taken seriously, undermine
the normative and political neutrality of these redistricting criteria. Building
on this observation, it makes the novel argument that redistricting should
abandon these criteria because they honor and empower exclusionary
communities while reducing the fairness and competitiveness of elections.
This Article argues for replacing subdivision preservation and compactness
as the primary redistricting criteria with a partisan fairness metric, as well as
a geographically and conceptually expanded idea of communities of interest.
Ultimately, this Article calls for a new conversation about which partisan and
nonpartisan communities deserve representation in redistricting and how
election law reformers and map-drawers can take new approaches to
delivering that representation.
