Ugly: An Inquiry into the Problem of Racial Gerrymandering Under the Voting Rights Act

Abstract

A fundamental problem of our representative democracy is this: how far may a legislature go in controlling who is elected to it? The compactness of districts is pertinent to this inquiry. We argue that compactness in some sense is ordinarily a property of single-member territorial districts. We offer proof that gerrymandering - whether it is conducted under the auspices of the Voting Rights Act or its freelance legislative tinkering - can spoil the game for representation by single-member districts. In order to avoid that destiny, an antigerrymandering principle must be defined and administered outside normal political channels.