MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And now we turn to our regular feature, Words You'll Hear. That's where we highlight one of the big stories of the coming week by parsing one or two of the words associated with it. And this week, our word is gerrymandering. Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court will hear two separate cases involving gerrymandering in North Carolina and Virginia. Republican lawmakers in those states are accused of manipulating the redistricting process along racial lines in order to ensure a GOP advantage.
Joining us now to tell us more about that is Michael McDonald. He teaches political science at the University of Florida, and he's done extensive research on election methodology. He was kind enough to join us from his home office in Gainesville, Fla. Professor McDonald, thanks so much for joining us.
MICHAEL MCDONALD: My pleasure to be with you.
MARTIN: Can you just help us understand exactly what racial gerrymandering is? Where does the term come from, and how does the Voting Rights Act come into play in this?
MCDONALD: Well, historically, particularly in southern states, state legislatures and state governments used the redistricting process to reduce the representation of minority communities. They did this through two mechanisms.
One was splitting the African-American communities to reduce the opportunity for African-Americans to possibly elect a candidate of their choice because their power would be diluted over many districts. The other way in which the southern state governments used redistricting as a tool to reduce minority influence was to pack minorities. So in this case, what the state legislatures would do is they would take a community and increase its population share of minorities within the district such that the African-American community would win by an overwhelming margin, thus reducing their influence or their chances of influencing other districts adjoining to that one district.
So with respect to the Voting Rights Act, the federal government declared that the cracking of a minority population or packing of a minority population in an effort to reduce their influence over representative government, that was illegal.
MARTIN: Now, North Carolina has been in the news previously because of the way the legislature changed the rules around voting, say, cutting off early voting days. And the - a federal judge in that case said that there was ample evidence that they had specifically targeted practices that were particularly favored by minorities in getting access to the polls. But this is different. This is - these cases are solely about how the lines were drawn, correct?
MCDONALD: Yes and no. That other case actually is relevant to the racial gerrymandering case. And the reason why is because when courts look at the evidence that a racial gerrymandering has occurred, they look not only at the circumstances related specifically to the redistricting that took place, but they also look at the other political environment and other laws and other rules that the state has enacted that might affect minority representation. That means that's more evidence that the court will put weight on that there was intentional discrimination when it came to the redistricting.
MARTIN: And what about the Virginia case?
MCDONALD: The Virginia case is an outgrowth of the congressional redistricting case. And for full disclosure, I was plaintiff's expert in that case. In that case, the state had put up a expert in defense of their actions. And that defendant said that they had certain target numbers that they were trying to get for black voting-age population within the 3rd Congressional District. And that's in violation of the Voting Rights Act. At least, that's what the plaintiffs are claiming in the state legislative case. And it's what the court found in the congressional case.
So that question now is going up to the Supreme Court. It's a very similar question in both states, both Virginia and North Carolina. If the state has not done its requisite due diligence in looking at voting patterns and other things within the state, then the courts are - at least so far have said, well, that is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. And it's also possible because the defendants are also claiming that this wasn't about race, this was merely about politics.
And it's just that race and politics in this case intersects, and so therefore nothing amiss happened here. It's just purely politics at - was at play with trying to create districts that would maximize the number of Republicans that were being elected to the various redistricting plans at play here.
MARTIN: That was Michael McDonald. He's a professor of political science at the University of Florida. He joined us from his home office in Gainesville. Professor McDonald, thanks so much for speaking with us.
MCDONALD: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.