Jordan Cole

ENVS 442
A Game of Zones: An Analysis of Texas and Washingtons Congressional Redistricting
Process and How it Affects Demographics
This project is a case study of Washington and Texas to show the change of voting districts over
time, as well as how these changes reflect the demographics of their areas. Texas and
Washington were chosen due to the differences in positions held and partisanship of the
committees in charge of redistricting. Improper redistricting, commonly known as
Gerrymandering, is a contested issue, and it has been thought to change the political
representation at state and country levels unjustly.

Introduction
The goal of this project is to represent the movement of the U.S. Congressional
Legislative Districts over time, and how the changes in those districts may be influenced
by demographics. These districts are redrawn following the completion of the United
States Census. Texas and Washington were chosen as a case study due to the differences
in their redistricting processes, much like the study done by Heather Gerken of the Yale
Law School in which she chose a case study examining the redistricting process of
Pennsylvania and Texas. Washingtons districts are drawn via independent, bi-partisan
commission. Texas districts are redrawn by the current governing body which is in
power during the time of census completion. The essence of a partisan gerrymander
claim is not that one's preferred candidate lost. Rather, it is that candidates from the other
party were, on average, more likely to succeed than those from one's own. To resolve that
claim, one has to make a judgment about what constitutes a "fair" electoral scheme, i.e.,
bow legislative power ought to be divided among voters (Gerken 2004).

The act of changing these legislative districts to influence elections on a state-by-state

scale, which in turn influences the legislation passed, is called Gerrymandering, and is
perfectly legal in the United States. Partisan gerrymandering is not new. The very term
"gerrymander" is nearly 200 years old and the practice much older still. For
generations, however, the federal courts refused, on "political question" grounds, to
police either gerrymandering or its close cousin, malapportionment" (Berman 2005).
Much of the methodology in this project was influenced by the work of M.P. McDonald
who wrote, Districting plans with a total population deviation (the sum of the largest
plus and minus deviations) below 10% are generally regarded as complying with one
person, one vote. In addition to one person, one vote, jurisdictions are required to
comply in redistricting with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits minority
vote dilution.' Section 2 provides that a voting practice is unlawful if it results in
discriminationif, based on the totality of circumstances, it provides minorities with
"less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political
process and to elect representatives of their choice" (McDonald). This influenced the idea
to show the changes in area of districts and how those changes were possibly influenced
by the minority make up of districts. These districts with high fluctuations of area and
minority population would not necessary be abiding by the one person, one vote
ideology. This project seeks to find if and how gerrymandering may be present.
Data
The data that was used for this project was gathered from the Census Bureau
website and from an independent project done by Jeffrey B. Lewis and colleagues from
the University of California Los Angeles. The census data gathered was used to find

demographic data for each congressional district within the congressional districts of
every state in the United States, of which I used just the data for Texas and Washington
as a case study. The data gathered from the website was just demographic data in table
form, however, so it needed to be joined to a shapefile to show its spatial extent. I also
needed to find historical congressional districts to show their change over time, and
congressional districts before the year 2007. This is where I found the congressional
district shapefiles from Lewis et al. Jeffrey Lewis shapefile database provided shapefiles
for the entire United States beginning in the 1700s. I used only data ranging back to the
1960s, so as to represent the most recent and relevant data. Congressional districts are
numbered after every redistricting. The current congressional district is the 114th
congressional district. The data I used that ranged back to the 1970s was the 97th district.

Congressional districts are redrawn after every census, which is done after every decade.

Figure 1. Data flow diagram showing process of analysis

After the data was gathered from the census website as well as from Jeffrey
Davis shapefile website, the data needed to be re-projected and joined together. The
shapefiles needed to be separated and re-projected into two different projections due to
their distance from each other. The congressional district shapefiles were both reprojected into their respective NAD 83 state plane systems in meters. I then added fields
to the shapefiles to find total minority population, as the data from the census website
was only offered on a per-person basis, as in data was provided as different minority

counts rather than total minority population as a whole within the district. After the total
minority population was counted, I then normalized that count by the overall population
within each district to find the percentage of minorities in the total population of each
district. To find the relationship in change of minorities within each district compared to
the overall size of each district I also calculated the percent change in area between each
district with the same number I.D. after redistricting. This process was done by simply
normalizing the newer district area by the former district area to find the percent change
in the area of each congressional district after the redistricting process. Finally, to have a
basis for the normal amount of minority change, I found the percent change in minority
population in the state as a whole to compare to the change within each district.
Results
The results of the project were largely inconclusive. Texas had much larger
changes in minority district area than those in Washington State. The results seem to
show larger percent change, mostly negative, for both minority and district area change.
This could be an indicator of gerrymandering, however, these results are not totally
conclusive due to the many other aspects that go into the redistricting process, as well as
the sheer greater amount of population in Texas compared to Washington. One big factor
that may contribute to skewing the results is simply the sheer size and population
difference between Washington and Texas. Texas is far larger in area than Washington,

Figure 2. Shows Washington and Texas congressional districts for the 114th (present) district.
Districts are symbolized by percent minority.

so naturally the change in district size over time will most likely always be bigger, as
there is simply more area to divide into districts than there are in a smaller state such as
Washington. The same problem is also true for the population of Texas compared to

Washington. The sheer increase in overall population in Texas compared to Washington

will also mean that there is simply more minorities within the state because the
population is so much larger. Including the percent change in overall state minority
population was an attempt to compare the changes in the districts to the changes in the
state as a whole (Figure 2). I also used this information to create visuals in ArcMap for
Washington and Texas from the current district (114th) to the districts of the 1970s (92nd),
and used transparencies within each district to qualitatively show higher distributions of
minority populations within states. These results are shown in Figure 3. If a district had a
much larger percent change in minority population during redistricting years for the
entire state, yet the redistricting process also yielded negative percent changes in most
congressional district, it would be possible to make the conclusion that there was possible
gerrymandering present, as it would mean that minorities were being purposefully

funneled into districts or misrepresented knowing that there was a large influx in state
percent increase during that decade.

Figure 3. Shows percent change in congressional district area as well as percent minority population
in Washington between the years of the 93rd and 98th redistricting. The bottom shows the percent
change in minority population for the entire state of Washington.

Discussion
Overall, the data was largely inconclusive. The results lack conclusive evidence to
find that there is in fact gerrymandering at work to dismantle or under-represent minority
populations. Although the data found shows a certain, if slight, trend in minority
population slightly positively represented in Washington and vice versa in Texas, these
conclusions are still arbitrary until statistics are used to show a certain trend is being
shown with the data. As the data stands now, the most compelling evidence to back this
perceived trend is mostly qualitative in the overlaid districts showing darker red shades to

show minority population density and line redrawing, rather than showing a definite trend
with population data within the two states. The data does show, however, that there are
large decreases in overall minority population historically in almost every redistricting
change in nearly every new district in Texas. The only exception is in the most recent
redistricting process. This is significant, as the same observation cannot be said for
Washington. What makes this more significant is the knowledge of how these two states
districts are redrawn. There is more motive for Texas redistricting officials to redistribute
their congressional lines in order to help their own party in re-election. Washingtons
redistricting officials are chosen to have less motivation to help a certain party. This is the
main cause for gerrymandering.
Future Research
Further research is needed to draw more accurate conclusions. Further research is
needed to draw conclusive statistical results in this report to accurately determine which
states Congressional Districts are more fairly drawn. As I have described, the data
presented would be greatly improved by moving away from qualitative results and
disjointed findings to quantitative results of the findings showing how far from the mean
these population and area changes are.
Contrarily, a much more conclusive approach to derive more hard data would be
to find a way to isolate and separate the polygons in which the most geometric change
was occurring and use these isolated polygons to run an aerial weighted interpolation
with demographics to find if the areas of most change are in any way related to the areas
of high minority population density. The results I have found are on too large of a scale to
show true minority population density. Being able to recognize and isolate areas of

intense minority population makeup is imperative to find actual voting manipulation. If

there was also a better way to find isolated polygons that represented the areas in which
the land was most frequently changed into different districts, then it would be much more
conclusive to find these highly manipulated areas and overlay them to see if they were in
the areas that made up the areas of high minority population density. Conversely, the
same can be done to areas where there is most high density of white or Caucasian
density, as to show redistricting continuously incorporating a certain population.
This process should also be run with different social factors such as income and
education to see if gerrymandering is present.
Bibliography
Berman, M. N. (2005). Managing Gerrymandering. Texas Law Review, 83(3), 781-854.
Gerken, H. K. (2004). THE TEXAS AND PENNSYLVANIA PARTISAN
GERRYMANDERING CASES. University Of Pennsylvania Law Review, 153(1),
503-540.
Jeffrey B. Lewis, Brandon DeVine, Lincoln Pitcher, and Kenneth C. Martis.
(2013) Digital Boundary Definitions of United States Congressional Districts,
1789-2012. Retrieved from http://cdmaps.polisci.ucla.edu on May 5th, 2016.
McDONALD, L. (2009). THE LOOMING 2010 CENSUS: A PROPOSED
JUDICIALLY MANAGEABLE STANDARD AND OTHER REFORM
OPTIONS FOR PARTISAN GERRYMANDERING. Harvard Journal on
Legislation, 46(1), 243-274.
McDonald, M. P. (2004). A Comparative Analysis of Redistricting Institutions in the

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FactFinder". <http://factfinder2.census.gov>. (May 5th, 2016).