The state Legislature has passed a new congressional district map reflecting population changes, as they must every 10 years. While a veto by Governor Kelly, further tweaking in the legislature, and lawsuits over racial representation are all likely, the general outlines of this proposed map are likely to stick, which makes some things frustratingly clear, especially for Democrats.
The proposed map splits Wyandotte County, taking the northern half from the Third District and putting it in the Second, which now twists like a contorted “S” from the northern state border to the south. And it extends the First District all the way east to Douglas County, dipping south just far enough to grab Lawrence, meaning both K-State and KU, home of some of the state’s most liberal voters, would be politically counted as part of conservative western Kansas.
This may still change, of course. But if you’re a Republican who applauded when former Senate President Susan Wagle promised in 2020 that, with a super-majority, the Republicans could draw a map that would make impossible the re-election of Sharice Davids, the Third District’s Democratic representative, these changes probably make you happy. If you’re a Democrat, they don’t.
This kind of gerrymandering — drawing borders to include more voters of one party than the other — is an American tradition, however much it is attacked. Except in those few states that have made the redistricting process non-partisan, it has become predictable, with political and legal moves well practiced. Hence, it has also reached the point of diminishing returns.
Yes, Representative Davis will likely have a harder race this November, but not dramatically so; gerrymanders which completely change electoral outcomes are rare these days. Redistricting is governed by a host of rules rooted in the principle of “one person, one vote,” and while there are some ways around those rules, the requirement that the districts are drawn to provide relatively equal representation forces even the most aggressive partisans to deal with hard population realities. In a state with slow growth like Kansas, those realities are particularly stark.
American elections are of the “single-member plurality” type — we carve up the country (or state, county, city, etc.) into sections, and elect whichever single person gets the most votes within those borders. There are more proportional election systems, but so long as we use this one, the advantage will be on the side of voters that are spread out, occupying a lot of sectional space.
Over the past century, likely Democratic voters (racial and sexual minorities, immigrants, college students, etc.) have usually clustered in urban areas. Those urban votes add up — Kelly’s state-wide majority came from winning only nine of Kansas’s 105 counties, all of them more urbanized, and also the only parts of Kansas growing in population. But because those voters are densely clustered, they often find themselves easily packed into sections where their numbers are more than balanced out by Republican voters spread out over rural and suburban space.
Thus, aside from states with sprawling urban agglomerations like New York City or Chicago, redistricting usually fails to serve Democratic voters well. Kansas Democrats will rightly fight this structural bias, perhaps successfully. But our system just wasn’t built with urban living patterns in mind, a reality that even Democrats in a slow-growth, mostly rural state like Kansas can’t avoid.
Dr. Russell Arben Fox teaches politics in Wichita.