In case there was any real question about the vices of partisan redistricting, even the Richmond Times-Dispatch correctly points out part of the cause of the current transportation fiasco going on at the General Assembly:

“Republicans created, in effect, minority districts wherein narrow bands of the electorate, often anti-tax conservatives, have disproportionate influence. The key to winning and holding such House seats: sucking up to the right. It’s not always a pretty sight, but survival compels it.”

As any economist would be quick to tell you, most politicians are simply vote maximizers/vote-loss minimizers. However, if you only bander that superficial description around, you lose a bit of nuance that is critical to why this impasse has happened in the first place. To borrow a page from Animal Farm, all voters are equal, but some voters are more equal than others. In how it pertains to redistricting, the voters worth mentioning are primary voters.

Because we have our elected officials drawing the lines of their own districts, whichever party that controls both chambers can effectively maximize the number of districts that are dominated by voters of the same political persuasions. What ends up happening is that the number of competitive districts dwindles, and in those that are considered “safe,” the party primary ends up being the only real challenge to an incumbent. So really while politicians are vote maximizers, it should be pointed out that politicians in safe districts are primary vote maximizers.

So who votes at these primaries? Well, since they tend to have much less publicity, only those people really vested in the interest of the party. So for Democrats, you tend to get more liberal voters than on average even within the party, and for Republicans, you tend to get even more conservative voters than on average. These extremists on both sides have priorities that tend to be different than the agendas of the average Virginian, but remember, their vote is the one that matters. So these politicians adopt policy stances to cater to these extremists. In the current case of the Republican party, these extremists are from two main bases: No-New-tax, and conservative social policies.

I dislike taxes as much as the next guy, but I realize that Virginia’s state budget is actually surprisingly lean. The supermajority of my squandered tax dollars are done so in Washington. But I’m not who matters: The guy that votes in the Republican primary that believes any tax is a bad tax, he is who actually wields the power. And that is why the House of Delegates killed Kaine’s bill in a heartbeat.

Now, the inflation of legislative priorities due to a minority of voters holding more power than the rest of us should be enough for one to say the partisan redistricting is bad. But let me swim a bit further into the dark and stormy waters of speculation, and just suggest an idea. The political debate between candidates and parties becomes the news which the media reports, which in turn shapes voter opinions. Well, since these legislators are making priorities of issues that may not always be in sync with the population at large, isn’t that also shaping the debate, and in turn also helping decide what the journalists are making stories out of?

Completely lacking empirical data of any variety, let me just appeal to your basic sense of intuition. When partisan redistricting puts power into the hands of a minority (on both sides), we then have a minority being catered to via policies and legislation that this minority supports. The debate is over issues that these minorities care about, which in turn is what is reported about, which in turn is read and processed by the majority of the public that only votes in the general elections. Reading about these minority issues over time lends them an air of legitimacy, and in time the public treats them as serious topics of discussion.

The no-new-tax movement is a perfect example of this, as it emerged out of the minority base of the Republican party, but has since seized the state as a talking point for or against. It is also a large reason why many of the older Republicans recently stopped running for office, because they remember when it was treated as the silly idea that it is. However, today they can either cater to it, or face primary challengers. Some have catered, while those others left the game.

What I’m trying to get across here, and what you should take with a major grain of salt, is that partisan redistricting, over the long-term, changes what the public believes are normal legislative priorities. Specifically, it introduces the more extremist ideas from both sides of the spectrum, which are also the same issues which tend to polarize people. Much has been made of this increasing polarization of our politics over time, but I would suggest that one of the best ways to strike back against this change would be to establish bipartisan or nonpartisan forms of redistricting.