The I-70 Compromise

As we approach the 2022 Mid-term US Congressional elections, there's been a lot of talk about redistricting and gerrymandering. For those unfamiliar, each US state with multiple US House seats gets to decide how those seats are apportioned geographically (and thus demographically) after the decennial census, within certain limits as dictated by federal law and jurisprudence. Gerrymandering is the term for the act of setting those boundaries in such a way as to favor a particular political party. When looked at overall, Americans are not fond of this practice; a vast majority of us would like to see it end according to multiple recent polls.

At present, 21 states have a non-partisan or bi-partisan redistricting scheme, and another six states have only one US House representative. But for the other 23 states, redistricting is handled via a by-nature partisan process involving the state legislature and/or governor. It is in those states where partisan gerrymandering can, and often does, enter the process. The process for each state's own legislative boundaries is another topic, but we won't be covering it here as the focus of this idea is the US Congress. In case you want to dive into each state's current process, Loyola-Marymount has a nice write-up for you.

Despite prolific public support for ending gerrymandering, it doesn't appear that a national effort to make such a change is happening anytime soon. The head-on solution would require an amendment to the US Constitution, which in the presently hardened political environment would very likely fail. While most people who pay attention to such things want gerrymandering to be thrown in the dustbin, they generally would not be willing to see their own state go there individually and give up their current party's political advantage when other states would not do the same. This would seem to leave us with either a shoot-the-moon option, or no option at all.

The Compromise

Illinois, after the 2020 Census-driven reapportionment, has 17 seats in the US House of Representatives. It is also among the states with a partisan legislative process for redistricting. For the last 20 years, the Democrats have held a majority (often a wide one) in both chambers of their state legislature. In the last two redistricting cycles (2010 and 2020), the majority party in Springfield has used gerrymandering to give them a dominant advantage in their US Congressional representation that goes well beyond the partisan lean of the state's general population. And it doesn't appear that will change soon.

Here's where it gets interesting. The two states that share the longest borders with Illinois - Indiana to the east and Missouri to the west - have the same process but have long been dominated by Republicans. Indiana has nine US House seats, and Missouri has eight. Add them together and you get... 17. The same number of seats as Illinois.

If the reason individual states are not willing to give up partisan gerrymandering is that they don't want to give the "other team" a political advantage in Washington, then what is stopping us from chipping away at the total in a way that gives neither party an advantage at that level?

A state legislator from any of the three states could craft a bill, establishing a non-partisan electoral commission for the purpose of US Congressional apportionment, similar to one of the 21 states already using one. Then around that core, you add trigger language. The trigger language would state that this law would only go into force when/if the same bill - unaltered except for the name of the state - was passed and signed into law in all three states. And if any of the states should pass a law altering or removing any of the language in the future, the compromise law would automatically expire, thus reverting all the states back to where they were.

This would not solve the entire problem nationally, of course. But it would take 34 more US house seats off "the board" of partisan gerrymandering and perhaps set an example for other state groupings to do to same. It would also be a small step towards restoring a little good will between voters and their state politicians, who already suffer from deeply low ratings for trustworthiness.

The hard part of course is the feat of political art that would need to be executed for this to work. State legislatures don't often interact directly with each other, unless it is to complain about something. There will be a visceral negative response to this idea from the more deeply partisan lawmakers in all three states, based not in facts but in an emotional need to hate anything that means working with "the enemy". Some slick sales work would be needed to show that portion of their legislators how this wouldn't hurt them in any way but would be a great look to show their constituents. This will only work if there is a convincing and well-connected champion in each chamber of each state to usher it through. But it is not impossible, and is probably a much smaller lift than an attempt at a US Constitutional Amendment.

Let's start now, eight years before the next redistricting process begins.