The Brexit referendum and the US presidential election of Donald Trump were a surprise to many, on both sides of the fence. In this information age, it is useful to ask how so many people could be so wrong about issues of so much importance. If we all knew what everyone else was thinking there could be no surprise. We are, in fact, wrong about many things when it comes to estimating the beliefs of the majority. Many of our errors arise not because our brains are tricking us, but because our appreciation of structure is underdeveloped. For example, for the majority of people, the places they vacation to are not average destinations, just as the traffic they experience is not average traffic nor the classes they sit through of average attendance. This is because, by definition, the most crowded places are attended by the most people. Similar illusions lead us to overestimate how many friends the average person has, confuse us into making backwards inferences about class and gender divisions, and allow politicians to misrepresent their populations. All of these are guaranteed outcomes of certain kinds of structure which an understanding of networks demystifies.

Here we first highlight the central role played by the vote and political participation in the democratic process. We then look at who votes and who participates in politics. The chapter underscores severe racial imbalances across most types of participation—both conventional and less conventional. It then seeks to explain these imbalances through a rigorous examination of factors like socioeconomic status, group identity and consciousness, institutions, and mobilization. We also look at the impact of uneven participation on outcomes in American democracy and introduce potential solutions for existing inequities.

This chapter focuses on Rousseau’s underappreciated treatment of voting and electoral laws. It argues that these are a worthy and essential part of the Social Contract – a matter of political life and death. First, Rousseau sees universal suffrage as necessary for establishing a political community, for selecting its form of government, and for discerning the general will. Second, electoral reforms are the primary mechanism for reducing the speed of political decline and “death.” The chapter brings together Rousseau’s remarks on the design of electoral districts, the manner of voting (i.e. timing, place, secret vs. open, order of casting ballots, thresholds), and the aggregation of votes, drawing primarily on his examples of flawed but enduring republics such as Rome, Sparta, Venice, and Geneva. Instead of reconstructing Rousseau’s blueprint for the perfectly just republic, the chapter shows how frequent and appropriate electoral reforms allowed these republics to outlive even their less corrupt contemporaries.

The “crisis of evangelicalism” that arose in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, who was supported by 80 percent of American evangelicals, provides a case study in the challenge of determining who counts as a “true evangelical” or a “true Christian.” The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to Christianity helps to clarify much of the controversy. The anxieties of modernity have forced all Christians, liberal and conservative, to explore new approaches to prescriptivism.

The chapter reviews the geographic aspects of Madisons system at the local, state, and regional levels. It begins with the crucially important rules that translate citizens votes into seats in Congress. It then describes how the advent of computers made it easier for politicians to evade traditional anti-gerrymandering rules and argues for an alternative, computerized approach that is simultaneously neutral, transparent, and respects the constitutional principle community. The scheme is further described in an Appendix. The chapter then turns to the states role in fostering political consensus within their borders while leaving room for different policy choices on the national scale. It concludes by examining how voters pushed the federal government into expansive missions that undermined the Framers principle of limited government and produced a bloody Civil War. The result was a new uncertainty over just where federal power begins and ends which still exists today.

Given America’s history of racial oppression, addressing racial discrimination has been the Court’s most transformative engagement with democracy. The Reconstruction Amendments’ prohibition of racial discrimination explicitly legitimizes judicial advancement of racial equity in elections. Relying on this mandate during the Civil Rights era, the Court struck down explicitly discriminatory laws (and permitted robust congressional action) with little controversy. However, in recent decades the Court has been fiercely divided over the substance of racial equity. Conservatives have argued that racial equity requires only ensuring formal equality in terms of race. Progressives have argued for a substantive constitutional conception of racial equity that would permit laws and rulings that benefit disadvantaged minorities and afford them substantive political power. The chapter first observes the unity of this debate across applying Equal Protection Clause to districting, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. It then analogizes the struggle on the bench to Rawls’s and Nozick’s famous debate over the fair allocation of resources.

Argued April 20, 1993.Decided June 28, 1993.

Justices Guy-Uriel CHARLES and Luis FUENTES-ROHWER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The 2016 presidential election brought on a blizzard of foreboding announcements about American democracy. Yet as political scientists and pundits alike turned their gaze toward the spectacle of Trump’s Washington, fewer seemed as concerned about what was happening in places like Raleigh or Jefferson City. In fact, scholars and commentators troubled by abuses of power in the executive branch pointed to federalism as “the most effective tool” for protecting democracy, “especially if other constitutional checks fail.” States, it was argued, provided crucial venues for dissent and the formation of alternative governing coalitions. And while new analyses of democratic backsliding mentioned gerrymandering in state legislatures and state-level episodes of “constitutional hardball,” they tended to focus their attention on the national level.

Do restricting reforms work? We investigate the effects of rules reforms and procedural reforms on districting outcomes. First, we investigate the effects of common “fair districting” criteria – that is, rules that require (or prohibit) certain outcomes in districting. We find little evidence that adding additional criteria will prevent partisan bias in districting. In many cases, such as district compactness requirements, it appears that districting authorities frequently ignore the rules. The biggest drawback with rules-based reforms is that they depend upon the judiciary for enforcement. We then evaluate the effects of “procedural reforms,” like citizen redistricting commissions. We find systemically less bias in districting when the maps are drawn by citizens and other independent bodies. Although the design and mechanics of commissions vary widely, we find the least bias in the maps drawn by redistricting bodies that forbid membership by politicians. This suggests that independent redistricting commissions represent an effective solution against partisan gerrymandering, provided they are staffed by citizens or independent public officials.

Is partisan gerrymandering widespread in the state legislatures? We assess state legislative redistricting maps approved by state governments in 2011. We find results that are similar to estimates of districting bias in the US House. On average, partisan bias increased after redistricting. State governments approved more than forty state legislative redistricting plans that gave one party an extreme electoral advantage. Although we find a few examples of Democratic gerrymanders with modest levels of bias, most of the extremely biased maps favor the Republican Party. In total, there are nearly two dozen maps that award Republicans 20 percent more of the seats than Democrats when the vote is close. These extreme partisan gerrymanders give Republicans a considerable structural advantage in state legislative elections. We estimate that, in the average state legislative assembly, Republican candidates can expect to win about 9 percent more seats than Democratic candidates would for a given share of the vote, between 45 percent and 55 percent of the vote.

We investigate the political and social consequences of the 2010 election and the gerrymandering that followed. We show that many of the governing parties that drew extremely biased maps also enacted greater restrictions on voter eligibility and ballot access prior to the 2016 presidential election. Furthermore, we find evidence that the level of partisan bias present in state legislatures influenced policy outcomes, distinct from partisan control of the legislatures. Many state legislatures, including those in crucial swing states, have effectively insulated themselves from public accountability at the same time that their constituents face growing public health challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this chapter we consider who gerrymandering harms and how. We start by explaining how Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) and the revival of gerrymandering after 2010 can be viewed as an attempt to roll back the voting rights revolution of the 1960s. That is to say, it is a fundamental assault on the principle of “one-person, one-vote.” We then consider how the harms of state legislative gerrymandering are different than the harms caused by congressional gerrymandering, given the role of state legislatures in redistricting and regulating elections at all levels. Then we consider the question of who suffers harm produced by partisan gerrymandering. We show that those suffering harm are not only those in gerrymandered districts or identifying with disadvantaged parties, but rather all citizens. Finally, we consider gerrymandering in the context of the broader crisis of faith in democracy and on American federalism.