Excessive gerrymandering in congressional redistricting is, by most accounts, a big problem. Even in an era when Congress’ approval rating barely cracks the low teens, recent history shows us that 85 to 95 percent of its members who run for re-election in 2012 will probably be coming back to Washington. That is because most congressional districts have been tailored to eliminate any chance that the incumbent will actually be defeated in the general election.
The solution proposed by many government reformers is to change who draws the lines often pushing to replace state legislatures and governors with special nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions. In this cycle, these reform efforts may have secured modest increases in competition mainly because the new commission in California, which holds 12 percent of the seats in Congress, did end up adopting a map that appears likely to yield significantly more competition. Overall, however, most commissions, like legislatures, tend to draw maps that overwhelmingly favor incumbents.
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