Indiana’s current congressional districts, drawn in 2021, includes nine districts. (Photo by Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle. Map courtesy of the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office. Illustration by Whitney Downard/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
I’m on my third decade covering the Indiana General Assembly, so I’ve seen a lot. But a mid-cycle redistricting will be a new one.
I say “will” because it seems like an inevitability at this point. So, I researched the history of apportionment and redistricting in Indiana.
What I found is that the partisan fights about gerrymandering are as old as Indiana.
The 1825-26 apportionment “embroiled lawmakers in a bitter struggle even though members had not yet divided into political parties,” according to the Centennial History of the General Assembly, 1816 to 1978.
In 1832, residents of Cass County complained because they were placed in the sixth congressional district, composed of Marion and surrounding counties in the central part of the state, even though Cass was separated from the rest of the district by the Miami Reservation. This made Cass the only county that did not enjoy contiguity with its district.
A Whig newspaper warned early in 1845 that if the opposition won a majority, the state would be “gerrymandered in all unseemly shapes, without, the least regard to equality.”
In 1879, one representative suggested dividing the state into equally populated districts without regard to politics. His motion was tabled.
We should all be glad we don’t live in the early days of statehood, when the population was growing rapidly and new counties were created regularly. Double districts and floterial districts were downright crazy.
The cycle of counting people and drawing boundaries was originally every five years. The Constitution of 1851 changed redistricting and apportionment to every sixth year.
Bolting
Bolting — or leaving the state to break quorum — was a regular feature.
In 1861, Republicans introduced a congressional districting bill and Democrats walked out.
“The bolters typified the cavalier attitude of both parties,” the centennial history book said.
“I saw them pretty nearly all in a batch, and the answer was ‘tell them to go to hell,’” said the Republican doorkeeper who tracked down the absentees. The bill was dropped.
In 1871, Democrats tried to redistrict early, and 34 Republicans resigned to prevent a quorum.
“The most spectacular party bolt” occurred in 1925. Republicans had huge majorities in both chambers, so Senate Democrats took a bus to Ohio.
“For the next two days, U.S. 40 between Indianapolis and Dayton was jammed with process servers and Republican politicos trying to coax, cajole, or coerce the fugitives back to their seats in the Indiana Senate,” the history book shows.
Eventually, the Ku Klux Klan’s Grand Dragon, D.C. Stephenson, went to Ohio to break the deadlock.
Sometimes the redistricting happened after new counts. At other times, the General Assembly skipped it for years, especially if the party in control liked the districts as they were.
Maps were found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Modern times have been more a little more orderly — but not always neutral. Lawmakers have only redistricted after the decennial census, though Republicans did briefly try a mid-decade maneuver in 1995 before abandoning it.
“The most successful exercise so far in all-out partisanship occurred in Indiana,” The New York Times wrote in 1981.
“Republicans used their majorities in both State Houses, the governorship and the computers of Market Opinion Research, a Detroit company that works for Republican districting efforts, to take maximum advantage of the shrinkage of the Indiana delegation to 10 members from 11,” the paper continued. “As a result, a delegation that now has six Democrats and five Republicans could easily become one with seven Republicans and three Democrats.”
Even when Democrats controlled the Indiana House in 1991 and 2001, Republicans controlled the Senate, so the affair had to be bipartisan. The GOP has had complete control of apportionment and redistricting after the last two census counts in 2011 and 2021.
Nothing is forever
Remember — though the current use of algorithms and computer programs is much harder to overcome — that ultimately, voters still decide.
“The history of state apportionment and congressional redistricting shows clearly that partisanship was the foremost consideration at each session where such laws passed. Gerrymandering by the majority always governed the drawing of district boundaries in the congressional elections between 1890 and 1930 illustrate both the efficacy and danger of the device for party advantage,” the history book said.
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In 1892, Democrats elected 12 of 13 congressmen with only 41.1% of the vote due to the Democratic districting act of 1891. But under the same bill in 1894 Republicans elected 11 congressmen.
Under the Republican act of 1901, however, Democrats elected 11 and 12 congressmen respectively in 1908 and 1910. Democrats remained almost totally dominant in 1912 and 1914 under the redistricting act of 1911 but in 1916 Republicans began 14 years of dominance under the same bill.
“So, while both parties succeeded in making districts safe for themselves temporarily, in the long run popular sentiment prevailed, proving that in Indiana, there was no such thing as a gerrymander in perpetuity.”
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