In practice, I don’t think any of that ever happens. If a state fails to redistrict, a federal court will find that the lack of a new map is unconstitutional and appoint a special master to draw a new map.
That only applies to the election after the decennial census if redistricting cannot be in time for the next election. Does not say, as penultimate_thule did, that congressional districts are a choice for the States.
Ballotpedia has a comprehensive listing of all the state redistrictring committees. Technically, the ones with “independent” or “citizen” in the title are not part of the state legislature. A quick look at their actual makeup shows that only a few live up to that claim.
What that listing shows is that after Congress apportions a number of Representatives after each decennial census, state’s have enormous latitude in drawing up maps carving up their states. Except for the six with lowest population that are only entitled to a single at-large Representative.
Best way to explain it is to look at the mandate of the boundary commission for each province:
How does Canada or any other place ensure that the districting commission is nonpartisan? Who selects the people on the commission, and why doesn’t politics play a role? What prevents them from becoming partisan?
Another thing that needs to be considered when drawing districts is that every precinct has to have the same ballot regardless of who is voting, so you can’t divide precincts unless you create new ones. I’m not sure how large of an issue that is, as I would think that creating new precincts isn’t that hard given that the vast majority of precincts in urban areas in my experience have multiple precincts voting at the same location. Presumably they want to have a reasonable number of people in each precinct to cut down on the overhead of producing the ballots which might need to be different from each precinct voting in the same location, and not have people change precincts, or at least voting locations, unless they actually change where they live.
Each province’s commission is composed of a superior court judge from the courts of that province, a nominee of the party in power federally, and a nominee from the party making up the official opposition.
Judges in Canada are non-partisan. They are not elected and are required to cut any political ties they may have had before being elected.
There is strong public support for a non-partisan, non-gerrymandered, fair electoral map. There was a history of parties that ran gerrymanders being unsuccessful in elections.
I can only remember one case where there was recorded opposition in the House of Commons to one of the proposed maps, but it was adopted even so.
This is not an issue in Canada. Federal elections are run separately from provincial elections, and provincial elections are run separately from municipal elections.
The ballot is the same for the entire riding, and in my experience rarely has more than about half a dozen names on it.
Gerrymandering is also done to create “majority minority” districts: congressional districts in which minority groups (typically Black or Hispanic) represent a majority of the voters in that district, and thus ensuring that the minority groups have a greater opportunity to be represented by members of their minority.
Depending on where those minority groups live, this may lead to odd-looking districts, drawn to connect areas that aren’t otherwise contiguous. The congressional district where I live in suburban Chicago is a Hispanic minority-majority district, and drawn in such a way to connect several different regions where many Hispanics live:
The issue with the Alabama case is that over 1/4 (27%) of Alabamians are Black; Alabama has seven Congressional districts, but only one of them (the 7th) is now drawn to be Black majority-minority.
We don’t do majority-minority analysis in Canada. As the rules set out above indicate, it’s mainly just geographic.
How does that work in the States, where you might have more than one minority (eg, racial, ethnic, linguistic) in an area?
In the Chicago area, for example, where there are large numbers of both Blacks and Hispanics, we have different minority-majority districts: two Black, and one Hispanic.
This Wikipedia article lists the minority-majority U.S. congressional districts; depending on the state, there are Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander districts.
Historically, segregation is the norm for racial and ethnic groups. (Sometimes because of semi-official forced grouping and sometimes because groups preferentially seek others like them, no matter what the race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) Usually that makes drawing lines practicable. In kenobi’s link above only three of the 67 majority-minority districts have fewer than 50% of the minority.
In those cases where two groups would intermix, battles occur.
I don’t like the use of “gerrymandering” for court-ordered redress districts, even if the results are not geographically compact. That’s the opposite intent of gerrymandering.
Could we trust a United States equivalent as much as we trust individuals nominated for the Supreme Court?
We used to be able to before conservatives decided to change the rules.
I’ve personally met one (now former) Supreme Court of Canada Justice because her kids went to the same camp I did. Beyond that, virtually no one outside of the legal profession could name the SCC justices. It just doesn’t work that way here.
When one of the Supreme Court of Canada judges retired several years ago, he was asked about politics on the Court. He said that he didn’t talk at all about how he voted in elections, and he did not know how his colleagues voted.
Well none of this is working.
(Maps)
for a provincial electoral map. Large PDF but you can see the Toronto ridings, for example, are almost regular polygons.
Like much else to do with constitutional matters in the UK, it relies on the “good chap” principle (that office-holders understand and behave according to the tacit spirit as well as the letter of the rules) - and public service professionalism (sorely tested by the likes of Boris Johnson, but that’s another issue). As well as statute law, there are formalised codes of conduct public servants must abide by. If there were sufficient perceptions of partisan shenanigans, I suppose it could end up in the courts, up to the Supreme Court, and with turmoil in the governing party in Parliament if enough of their MPs felt their seats would be at risk as a result.
In the case of our Boundary Commissions, the work is chaired by a High Court judge, and Assistant Commissioners appointed through an open public appointments process, as professionals:
https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/about-us/the-commissioners/
Just to add that, in the UK, there are strong rules about the siting and design of polling stations. They must be easily accessible to the majority of the district - that means geographically and by public transport. They must also be accessible to people with disabilities.
Constituency boundaries take no account of racial or ethnic groups but odd things can happen. The town where I live used to be in the corner of a large rural constituency. Rural communities are (perceived to be) more likely to vote conservative and this was thought to distort the Left/Right balance, where the townsfolk would (theoretically) be more likely to vote Labour. Boundaries were changed as the town grew, but it has more often returned a Conservative candidate than Labour.