The West Virginia Legislature is winding down its redistricting sessions, and the maps coming out of it aren’t pretty.
The north/south Congressional map isn’t awful. It puts both panhandles in the second (northern) district, and pits Reps. David McKinley and Alex Mooney against each other. Rep. Carol Miller is unaffected by the change.
The 100-district House of Delegates map is … something, all right. Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, claimed Monday that the proposed districts would pit 36% of incumbent Democrats against one another, while only 5% of Republican incumbents would be affected. These percentages are unverified, but anecdotally, Delegate Dave Pethtel, D-Wetzel, has announced he will not run for re-election, because he would be forced to run against a fellow Democrat, Delegate Lisa Zukoff of Marshall County.
Fluharty’s accusation was a not-so-subtle hint that the House map is gerrymandered on partisan lines, heavily favoring Republicans. The word “gerrymander” originates from an 1812 cartoon satirizing a district map drawn so oddly to favor incumbent Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts that the resulting district resembled a salamander — which the cartoonist called the “Gerry-mander.”
If Fluharty’s claim that the map specifically disadvantages Democrats holds water, then that is gerrymandering — legal gerrymandering, but gerrymandering all the same. With the House already overwhelmingly Republican, it should be nearly statistically impossible for more Democrats to experience face-offs against members of their own party than Republicans if the maps weren’t intentionally manipulated. It’s also worth mentioning that every amendment to the map proposed by a Democrat was shot down.
When you look at the House map for West Virginia, it’s not hard to see why some would insist the districts are gerrymandered.
The greater Morgantown area is lucky to stay largely intact. Westover, Granville and Star City are lumped together with the Suncrest and Evansdale areas of Morgantown to form District 80. The remaining majority of the city proper is divided into Districts 79 and 81. District 78 stretches from Brookhaven to the Preston County border and south a ways. The top end of Van Voohris east to the WVU farm and then out to Cheat Lake forms District 82. Finally, Mon County’s western end makes up District 77, with a little tail swinging east to pick up the southeastern-most point of Mon County.
Preston County is divided in two (north and south), with the border between Districts 83 and 84 snaking right between Kingwood and Albright. Not awful, but not ideal either.
But poor Fairmont is divided in two, following the river, with east Fairmont in District 75 and west Fairmont in District 76. Tell us how splitting a city into two districts that are otherwise largely rural isn’t gerrymandering. Then, there’s the visual horror that is District 74, which horseshoes around Districts 75 and 76 to pick up Logansport to the west, White Hall to the south and Prickett’s Fort to the east.
And you absolutely cannot look at Martinsburg’s new districts and tell us no gerrymandering occurred during the creation of this map. It’s the quintessential example of the “pizza slice” method: A sliver of the city (generally liberal) makes up the tip of a pizza slice-shaped district that is otherwise overwhelmingly rural (and conservative) in order to dilute the city’s voting power. In Martinsburg’s case, the city is now split across five districts.
At the time of this writing, the House map has not been officially approved, still awaiting a Senate vote. The Congressional map passed both chambers and will soon await the governor’s signature. As for the Senate map — it’s still under debate. As of Friday afternoon, the decision had been delayed multiple times.
We hope that by the time debate and amendments are over, the Senate redistricting map won’t be as disgracefully gerrymandered as the House map.
