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4 Nw. Interdisc. L. Rev. 89 (2011)
Non-Compactness as Voter Exchange: Towards a Constitutional Cure for Gerrymandering

handle is hein.journals/nwilr4 and id is 95 raw text is: NON-COMPACTNESS AS VOTER EXCHANGE: TOwARDS A CONSTITUTIONAL CURE FOR GERRYMANDERING Shlomo Angel* and Jason Parent'* The best way to protect the gerrymander is to deny the measurability of compactness. - John K. Wildgen' This essay proposes a novel compactness standard for courts to identify at least the worst cases of gerrymandering and to provide a remedy. This standard is based on the perception of gerrymandering as aggressive voter exchange, an exchange that distorts the shapes of election districts and renders them non-compact by expelling voters living close by and exchanging them for voters living further away. Aggressive voter exchange involves discrimination against large numbers of voters-possibly a majority of voters in some districts-only because of their voting preferences or their minority status. This form of discrimination, we argue, is prohibited by the First and the Fourteenth Amendments. The proposed standard requires that a majority share of the area of any election district be contained in the Equal-Land- Area Circle, a circle about the center of the district that has the same land area in the state as that of the district. Seven percent of district shapes in 1996 and ten percent in 2004 did not conform to this standard. Dr. Shlomo Angel, Lecturer in Public and International Affairs, The Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; and Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning, the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University; Address for correspondence: 284 Lafayette Street, Apt 3B, New York, NY 10012. Tel.: 212-925- 9055. Cell: 646-578-4821. Email: sangel@princeton.edu. t Jason Parent, Doctoral student and GIS specialist at the Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR), Natural Resources Management and Engineering, University of Connecticut. t The authors are indebted to a number of people who helped with various conceptual, legal, and measurement issues: Professor Richard Pildes provided the initial encouragement for the work as well as invaluable critical comments all along; Professor Roderick Hills helped us revise the conceptual framework and focus our attention on the importance of the centers of districts; and Professor Michael Heller introduced the notion of the asymmetric standard. Adam Gitlin focused us on the evolutionary aspect of this work; and Professors Daniel Civco and Gershon Ben Shakhar provided critical technical support. ' John K. Wildgen, Fractal Geometry and the Boundaries of Voting Districts, in SPATIAL AND CONTEXTUAL MODELS IN POLITIcAL RESEARCH 108 (M. Eagles ed., 1995). 89

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