The Real Victims of Gerrymandering: Independent Voters

The political parties are currently at war over redistricting. Red states are shaping district maps to become redder. Blue states are entrenching themselves more deeply blue. Legislators, party operatives, and lawyers are battling over the lines. The conversation largely revolves around control of Congress, and which political party will come out on top; however, there is an overlooked category of citizens in this process – political independents.

A staggering 45% of Americans identify as political independents, yet, due to the electoral systems in the United States and the dominance of the two-party system, they must watch from the audience as the parties duke it out over political control. Now, independents can hardly be grouped as all believing the same political ideology; rather, they usually lean left or right politically but have enough of a philosophical divergence from the party platform that they don’t feel comfortable registering with that party, or they are fed up with the status quo of either side and just want something different. Or they don’t feel sure which side they believe.

Gerrymandering (the partisan drawing of districts during redistricting) leaves independent voters out of the equation. For independent voters, the prospect is especially difficult, because the entire exercise is designed around a world they reject: one divided into rigid red and blue camps. 

More blue, more red

The redistricting wars are simply pushing states further apart on the political lines. When a state becomes more politically leaning, it often loses accurate representation of the political electorate residing within. In the past two years, a handful of red and blue states have pushed various gerrymandered maps, with mixed results, and more states are now in process as well. This tug-of-war still ends up generally balancing congressional representation, because both political sides are participating rather than just one. But the unseen consequence is that as states become more partisan, they leave behind the vast segment of the electorate that rejects standard party platforms.