The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission: One State’s Model for Gerrymandering Reform

In most states, redistricting, the process by which electoral district boundaries are drawn, is an overtly partisan exercise controlled by state legislatures. Politicians from the party in power draw the lines that determine new congressional and legislative districts after each decennial census; often they adhere to a brutal partisan calculus that privileges maintaining political power rather than reflecting the will of voters (that is, legislators routinely engage in “partisan gerrymandering”).