Transcription
Hey everybody, welcome back. We're not quite done with Congress yet, so smash that like button and let's get started. [Music]
I might be about to shock you, but did you know that members of Congress sometimes don't get along very well? We're in the midst of an era of party polarization—the idea that the two parties are getting further apart from each other ideologically. More specifically, the Republican party is becoming increasingly conservative, and the Democratic party is becoming increasingly liberal or Progressive.
Along those same lines, we see a lot of party-line voting in Congress, where everybody from one party votes yes, and everybody from the other party votes no. And surprising absolutely nobody, polarization and party-line voting can lead to policy gridlock, where it's slower and more difficult to pass legislation or to confirm nominations. That word "gridlock" might make you picture a traffic jam, and that's exactly what's happening in Congress—lots of honking and so much road rage. But ultimately, nothing is getting done.
Similarly, another reason it's tough to get anything done is the increased occurrences of divided government, when each party controls at least one of the house, the senate, or the presidency. This leads to intense partisanship, making it more difficult to get legislation passed, and it may lead to votes against presidential programs and an inability for presidents to get their appointments confirmed in the Senate. The opposite of this is Unified Government, where one party has the presidency and they have a majority in both the house and the Senate.
Let's shift gears and talk about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that helps determine who ends up in Congress. Okay, so we're aware that there are 435 members of the house and that it's based on population, but let's get into the weeds. Why does Florida have 28 Representatives, California 52, and Wyoming only has one? Yeah, population—you're right. But let's go a little bit deeper.
Every 10 years, the federal government conducts a census, following which is the process of reapportionment—changing the number of seats that each state has in the house to reflect population shifts. States that are growing faster get more representation, and states that are growing slower or even shrinking get fewer Representatives. Be careful, because it doesn't change the number of seats in the house; that's fixed at 435 and has been for a long time. It just changes how many of those seats belong to each state. After that takes place, next is redistricting, or redrawing the congressional district maps. For example, take Florida; it had 27 Representatives, but after the last reapportionment and census, they received 28. So now Florida's Congressional map needs to be redrawn into 28 districts instead of only 27. This job belongs to State legislatures and is super important because it can dramatically affect representation in Congress.
The reason it's so important is that there are about a million ways to draw that map, but legislators don't just draw the lines randomly. Quite frequently, they end up gerrymandering, or drawing congressional districts in bizarre shapes, most commonly to benefit the majority party. In that case, it's known as partisan gerrymandering and is allowed. But be careful not to use gerrymandering and redistricting interchangeably. I know they're closely related, but they're not the same thing, and words have meaning.
Two methods of gerrymandering are cracking and packing. Cracking refers to splitting up a constituency into multiple districts so that they don't have voting power in any of them. For example, let's say that the purple party is in charge and there's an area that has a lot of people from the aqua party; they could dilute the aqua party's strength by dividing them up into other districts that have a majority purple party. Packing is kind of the opposite. This time, you consolidate as many people from that other constituency into as few districts as possible. Let's say that the state is about evenly divided between purple and aqua; purple can't manage to have a majority in all of the districts—it's just not possible. So what they can do is choose a couple districts and try to put as many of the aqua people in them as possible. Sure, they're going to lose those few districts, but now they can easily win all the rest.
There are two required cases that go with this section: Baker versus Carr and Shaw versus Reno. Personally, I like to save these cases until you've learned more about the 14th Amendment, but I'll briefly mention them here. Following Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court used the equal protection Clause to enshrine the one-person, one-vote principle of voting equality in-house elections. This led to the banning of malapportionment, or drawing districts of very unequal populations. So yes, the shape can be bizarre, but each district has to contain roughly the same number of people. You can't have one district with a hundred people and another with two million—totally not fair.
In addition to partisan gerrymandering, sometimes state legislatures approved Congressional maps that were racially gerrymandered before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This was usually done to dilute minority voting strength, leading to the underrepresentation of Black Americans. After the Voting Rights Act, this was often done for the opposite reason—to increase minority representation. However, in Shaw versus Reno, the Court ruled racial gerrymandering unconstitutional, stating that districts cannot be drawn based only on race. Also, when it comes to gerrymandering, the lines must be contiguous, meaning that there are no gaps; it has to be one solid line the whole way. It also can't dilute minority voting strength, and again, it can't be drawn based only on race.
So there are four types of districts that we end up with as a result of the process. A majority-minority district is one where a majority of the people in the district are a racial minority. This is allowed; remember, the rule is just that the district can't be drawn based only on race. One of the arguments against gerrymandering is that it leads to too many safe districts, or safe seats. These are districts that aren't competitive at all. Depending on the election year, anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of all districts are considered safe, and this is a bummer because it devalues the importance of people's votes since it's going to be a blow-out anyway. Marginal districts are competitive, where candidates from each party have a legitimate chance of winning each time, and there are fewer and fewer competitive districts these days. And lastly, open districts or seats just means that there's no incumbent, so it's a battle between two noobs for the seat.
Last but not least, there are three models of congressional representation—in other words, what's the proper way for a representative to fulfill their role to their constituents? By the way, constituents refer to the people being represented. The trustee model says that Representatives should vote the way they believe is best, even if their constituents disagree. Listen, I know more about the topic; you voted for me, so trust my judgment. The delegate model says that Representatives should vote the way their constituents want, even if they personally disagree. I think I should vote yes on this bill, but the people who elected me really hate the bill, so I should do what they want if I ever want to be re-elected again. The political model is in between, saying sometimes act as a trustee, other times as a delegate. In this case, it probably matters whether it's a high-profile issue or not, or how close it is to an election. The more attention it has and if the election is competitive could swing me to acting like a delegate on this one.
All right, it's a lot of info, but that's it for this one. Until next time, this has been a Money production. Thanks again for watching, like, subscribe, ring the bell. You know an Ultra review packet; it's still there for you; it's not going anywhere. And I will see you in the next video.