Congressional Districts Research Articles

Conquering Space through Internal Improvements: Federal Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract Early American political leaders were tasked with sustaining a representative republic on a seemingly impossible scale. Their struggle to stave off political dissolution raises an important question for scholars of federalism. How can democratic governments integrate disparate political communities across a vast—and rapidly expanding—territory? We revisit the solution most often proposed by contemporary political leaders: a nationally directed system of internal improvements. Using a dataset of nineteenth-century appropriations, we find that patterns in internal improvement funding are consistent with a nation-building strategy. Congressional districts at the fringes of the republic received disproportionate support from the federal government, even after accounting for political preferences, positions of legislative authority, and sub-national spending patterns. Our research stands in contrast to existing work on internal improvements, which is primarily interested in testing theories of distributive politics, and contributes to a diverse body of research on federalism, nation-building, congressional politics, and American political development.

Mortality-to-incidence ratios by US Congressional District: Implications for epidemiologic, dissemination and implementation research, and public health policy

The mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) can be computed from readily accessible, public-use data on cancer incidence and mortality, and a high MIR value is an indicator of poor survival relative to incidence. Newly available data on congressional district-specific cancer incidence and mortality from the U.S. Cancer Statistics (USCS) database from 2011 to 2015 were used to compute MIR values for overall (all types combined), breast, cervix, colorectal, esophagus, lung, oral, pancreas, and prostate cancer. Congressional districts in the South and Midwest, including MS, AL, and KY, had higher (worse) MIR values for all cancer types combined than for the U.S. as a whole. For all cancers combined, there was a positive correlation between each district's percent of rural residents and the MIR (r = 0.47; p < .001). The MIR for all cancer types combined was lower in districts within states that expanded Medicaid vs. those states that did not expand Medicaid (0.36 vs. 0.38; p < .001). A positive correlation was seen between the proportion of non-Hispanic Black residents and MIR (r = 0.15; p < .01 for all cancers). Lower MIRs were observed in districts in New England and in states that expanded Medicaid. However, there also were some interesting departures from this rule (e.g., Wyoming, South Dakota, parts of Wisconsin and Florida). Rural congressional districts have generally higher MIRs than more urban districts. There is some concern that poorer, more rural states that did not expand Medicaid may experience greater disparities in MIRs relative to Medicaid expansion states in the future.

One Person, One Vote: Misrepresentation in the Debate over Gerrymandering and Congressional Districts

What I will show in this article is that districts drawn geographically are antithetical to the very principle of one-person, one-vote that was upheld by the Supreme Court and is widely utilized as the norm in public discourse. As a result, there is an inherent paradox. If we are to truly be seeking equal protection through fair representation in terms of legislative districts, we are advocating for a system of proportional statewide representation. What geographically-bounded congressional districts instead do is provide equal protection to specific geographic communities, or at the very least geographic borders, and determine fair representation in the form of representing communities of people as opposed to representing individuals at the state level, at which proportional statewide congressional representation would aim. I display how misrepresentation in the debate surrounding redistricting and partisan gerrymandering has occurred as a result of increasing party polarization taking place in conjunction with legislation and court rulings. These occurrences have caused misrepresentation by shifting the focus of reform from considerations of regulating the number and proportion of elected representatives to crafting politically-neutral redistricting procedure. The reason that this has been such an issue for the democratic process and representation is that it has moved focus from who elected officials are chosen to serve and why they struggle between political parties for a better image and greater power. As a result, party polarization and partisan gridlock has blocked progress towards democratic representation and efficient electoral processes. To remedy this, it is suggested that this problem is acknowledged and measures are taken to move considerations back upon how best to represent citizens.

Are All Districts Created Equal? Examining the Relationship between Socio-political Factors and "Women-Friendly" Districts

This project asks readers to consider what factors influence women to enter races for U.S. Congress and why some districts are more “women friendly” than others. While multiple studies have been done that examine factors such as gendered media bias, cultural and society gender norms, and institutional factors in explaining the dearth of female candidates, there is little research on how different demographic elements of congressional districts effect a woman’s decision to run in a primary election. Hence, I examine the various sociopolitical factors of congressional districts that are unique to a district, such as unemployment rate, high school and college graduation rate, median household income, and a variety of other political variables to determine if they have any effect on the presence of a female candidate within that respective district’s primary election. This potential relationship will be studied by collecting data on the number of women who ran in either the Democratic or Republican primary during the 2016 election (the first year with no increase in the number of women in Congress in the past decades). I will also study if any of the district variables have varying effects across party lines, for example, if median household income shows an increase in women in the Democratic primary versus women in the Republican primary. Women are much more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than men, and women, in general, are likely elected in different districts than men.

Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms for Reinforcing Equal Population in Congressional Districts

Redistricting is the process of partitioning a set of basic units into a given number of larger groups for electoral purposes. These groups must follow federal and state requirements to enhance fairness and minimize the impact of manipulating boundaries for political gain. In redistricting tasks, one of the most important criteria is equal population. As a matter of fact, redistricting plans can be rejected when the population deviation exceeds predefined limits. In the literature, there are several methods to balance population among districts. However, further discussion is needed to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. In this paper, we considered two different strategies, mean deviation and overall range. Additionally, a compactness measure is included to design well-shaped districts. In order to provide a wide set of redistricting plans that achieve good trade-offs between mean deviation, overall range, and compactness, we propose four multiobjective metaheuristic algorithms based on NSGA-II and SPEA-II. The proposed strategies were applied in California, Texas, and New York. Numerical results show that the proposed multiobjective approach can be a very valuable tool in any real redistricting process.

Examining the Impact of Black Political Representation on White Racial Attitudes in Majority Black Congressional Districts

This article investigates the impact of Black congressional representation on the racial attitudes of Whites. Utilizing data from the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, we test whether Black political representation impacts Whites’ levels of racial resentment. The informational theory suggests Whites gain critical information as a result of their experience living under Black political leadership and that their experience should positively impact how they feel about Blacks once Whites see that their lives are not dramatically changed as a result of Black political representation. The findings of this article challenge the notion that having a Black political representative will be associated with a decrease in negative racial attitudes among Whites. Using racial resentment to measure White racial attitudes, we find that living under a Black congressional representative only has a marginal effect on racial attitudes. In contrast to the informational hypothesis, we find that Whites who reside in congressional districts represented by a Black person are not less racially resentful than Whites who live in districts that are not represented by a Black person.

The Value of Political Geography: Evidence from the Redistricting of Firms

We demonstrate that political geography has value to firms. We do so by exploiting shocks to political maps that occur around redistricting cycles in the United States. These keep some firms in Congressional districts that are largely unchanged at one extreme and reassign other firms to entirely new sets of constituents at the other extreme. Our main finding is that firms suffer from being reassigned into districts that are competitive across parties relative to safer districts. The effects are not trivial in magnitude. Moreover, they do not depend on whether firm retain the same politician or actively make campaign contributions.

Mail-In Absentee Ballot Anomalies in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District

Abstract The aftermath of the 2018 midterm election in North Carolina was marred by allegations of absentee ballot fraud in the state's 9th Congressional District, most notably in Bladen County, on...

Federal tax policies, congressional voting and natural resources

AbstractCan abundance of natural resources affect legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies? We construct a political economy model of a federalized economy with district heterogeneity in natural resource abundance. The model shows that representatives of natural resource‐rich districts are more (less) willing to vote in favour of federal tax increases (decreases). This occurs because resource‐rich districts are less responsive to federal tax changes due to the immobile nature of their natural resources. We test the model's predictions using data on roll‐call votes in the US House of Representatives over the major federal tax bills initiated during the period of 1945–2003, in conjunction with the presence of active giant oil fields in US congressional districts. Our identification strategy rests on plausibly exogenous giant oil field discoveries and exploitation and narrative‐based aggregate federal tax shocks that are exogenous to individual congressional districts and legislators. We find that: (i) resource‐rich congressional districts are less responsive to changes in federal taxes and (ii) representatives of resource‐rich congressional districts are more (less) supportive of federal tax increases (decreases), controlling for legislator, congressional district and state indicators. Our results indicate that resource richness is approximately half as dominant as the main determinant, namely party affiliation, in driving legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies.

Distance Matters: a more than euclidean approach to visualizing gerrymandering

Distance Matters: a more than euclidean approach to visualizing gerrymandering

Compliance of the ‘Batas Kasambahay’ (Ra 10361) Among Domestic Employers in Zamboanga Del Norte: Basis for Bureaucratic Intervention

Every human being has its own rights and privileges to be enjoyed for a lifetime. To have a happy and secure means of living is always a dream of every individual. This study is designed to determine the compliance of the “Batas Kasambahay” (RA 10361) among domestic employers in Zamboanga del Norte as the basis for bureaucratic intervention. It utilized descriptive normative survey method of research employing the questionnaire as the main data gathering tool; employing frequency count, simple percentage, and Likert’s method of determining the weighted mean; utilizing the 30 kasambahay working in households situated in the Poblacion areas of the towns in the three Congressional Districts within the territorial jurisdiction of the province of Zamboanga del Norte. Findings led to the conclusion that the mandated right to board and lodging and medical attendance, humane treatment, and access to communication were compiled by the majority of the domestic employers. However, their rights for social and other benefits and incentives were not complied with by the latter.

Firm-level Political Risk and Credit Markets

We study two effects of firm-level political risk on debt markets. First, we take advantage of a new measure of political risk (Hassan et al. (2019) and the redrawing of US congressional districts to uncover plausibly exogenous variation in firm-level political risk. We show that changes in borrowers’ level of political risk lead to changes in interest rates set by lenders. Second, we test for the transmission of political risk among economic agents. We predict and find that lender-level political risk propagates to borrowers through lending relationships, which highlights the role of network effects in diffusing risk throughout the economy.

Contracts, Agency Vulnerability, and the Allocation of Federal Funds

Legislators have the potential for credit claiming from agency spending in a congressional district only when the awarded contracts or grants are sufficiently large to be noticed or appreciated. Therefore, unlike previous research on distributive politics, we examine the allocation of contracts considering the size of the contracts, not just the overall spending or the numbers of contracts per congressional district. We use a difference-in-difference analysis to evaluate how agencies altered their allocations of contracts in response to the 2006 congressional elections, in which partisan control of the Congress changed to the Democrats. We find that federal agencies responded to the election by allocating larger contracts to Democratic districts. In addition, we find that agencies whose programs received lower scores on the Bush administration’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) allocated larger contracts to Democratic than Republican districts than did agencies whose programs received higher PART ratings.

Automated Congressional Redistricting

Every 10 years, when states are forced to redraw their congressional districts, the process is intensely partisan, and the outcome is rarely fair and democratic. In the past few decades, the growing capabilities of computers have offered the promise of objective, computerized redistricting. Unfortunately, the redistricting problem can be shown to be NP-Complete, but there are a number of heuristics that are effective. We specifically define the redistricting problem and analyze several variations of a new divide and conquer algorithm, comparing the compactness and population deviation of our new algorithm to existing algorithms and the actual districts. We offer a comparative component-based analysis that demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm component and the type of input. The comparative analysis shows that there are several ways to produce valid redistricting plans, but each approach has benefits and consequences. Our new algorithm produces valid results to the redistricting problem in almost every state that undergoes congressional redistricting, offering a new solution to this challenging real-world problem. In one version, the algorithm produces plans with the optimal population deviation in 42 out of 43 multi-district states, which is better than most algorithms in the literature. While compactness scores vary, this approach offers new opportunities to improve population deviation. Our output files comply with the accepted format at most government hearings and redistricting competitions, so the results would be compatible with most public participation efforts in 2020.

Suicidal ideation, suicidal behaviors, and attitudes towards suicide of adolescents enrolled in the Alternative Learning System in Manila, Philippines\u2014a mixed methods study

BackgroundGlobally, suicide is a significant cause of death among adolescents. Previous studies conducted in high-income countries suggest that students in alternative schools are more likely to engage in suicidal behaviors than those in formal schools. This study aimed to document suicidal ideation and behaviors among adolescent learners enrolled in the Alternative Learning System (ALS) in Manila, Philippines.MethodsA mixed methods study was conducted in 24 ALS centers in the city of Manila. ALS centers were stratified according to congressional district and selected using probability proportionate sampling. A cross-sectional survey to determine attitudes towards suicide and prevalence of suicidal ideation and behaviors was administered to 171 learners aged 13 to 17 years old. In-depth interviews with 18 teachers and 12 learners were conducted to explore the school psychosocial environment’s role on learners’ suicidal ideation and behaviors. Exploratory factor analysis was used to extract attitude factors. Fisher’s exact test and Student’s t-test were used to identify differences in sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes towards suicide between learners with or without suicidal ideation or behaviors. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsNon-specific active thoughts were the most common type of lifetime suicidal ideation (40.9%) while passive ideation was the most common in the past month (13.5%). Aborted suicide attempt was the most frequent behavior in both lifetime (16.4%) and in the past month (4.7%). Non-fatal suicide attempt in the past month was 2.3%, reaching 12.9% for the entire lifetime. Age, sex, education, and attitudes towards suicide were significantly associated with suicidal ideation or behavior. Thematic analysis showed five themes: (1) fostering belongingness, (2) securing learners’ safety, (3) teaching philosophy, (4) teacher and learner beliefs towards suicidal behavior, and (5) availability of school-offered and community-based services.ConclusionSuicidal ideation and behaviors are prevalent among adolescent ALS learners. This study also showed a significant difference in attitudes towards suicide and sociodemographic characteristics between learners with and without suicidal ideation behaviors. It also suggests that the school psychosocial environment, through social norms and learner-teacher interactions, can potentially prevent progression of suicidal ideation to behavior, influence help-seeking, and promote mental health among learners.

Depository Designations

Though the FDLP Modernization Act of 2018 failed to land on the president’s desk, the first serious attempt at a legislative solution to the structural hindrances facing the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) must be applauded. In particular, granting the Superintendent of Documents the authority to designate depositories is a vast improvement over the current and ancient Congressional District Model of Depository Allocation. The inadequacies of this well intentioned method of allocating depositories nationwide have been articulated since the nineteenth century.

For the Culture: Examining the Electoral Success of African American Incumbents in the U.S. Congress

In a country where African Americans were once slaves, denied citizenship, elective office, and relegated to second class status a central question that has sparked the interest of scholars examining African American politics has been the benefits of African American political representation. Political Scientists such as Hanes Walton Jr. argues that the rise of African American politicians should significantly improve the lives of African Americans because these politicians will utilize their elected office to provide political representation for African Americans and pursue policies that will dismantle the legacy of racism for African Americans. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 African Americans politicians have won many seats to the United States Congress, yet few studies have explored the electoral success of these politicians. Studies that do examine the electoral success of African American Members of Congress all too often attribute their success to the creation of majority-minority congressional districts and provides very little attention to how they represent their constituencies. This chapter seeks to fill this void in the academic literature by examining the multiple contours that have attributed to the electoral success of African American congressional incumbents. Analyzing congressional elections from 1970-2012, this chapter demonstrates that while majority-minority congressional district is one the factors that provides African American House Members with an electoral advantage that their electoral success can also be attributed to the fact that they (1) benefit enormously from the incumbency factor, (2) they often face weak challengers in elections and (3) they engage in a number of different symbolic forms of representation that speaks to African American culture. The findings of this chapter suggest that like their white counterparts African American congressional incumbents are strategic actors and utilize many tactics that maximize their reelection chances. This chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for future research that will aid the scholarly community in better unpacking success of African American Members of Congress and African American descriptive representation.

Abstract P5-13-03: The effect of the affordable care act on the initial stage of presentation of breast cancer in a safety-net hospital

Abstract Background: There are disparities in breast cancer (BC) diagnosis. Black and Hispanic women have a lower rate of screening mammography while the uninsured are less likely to seek medical care even if a palpable mass is found in the breast. Jackson Memorial Hospital is the Safety-Net Hospital that serves the 2.5 million residents of Miami-Dade County which is the most populous county in the State of Florida. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 3, 2010 and the goal was to increase the number of insured individuals. In January 2011, it was mandated that health insurance providers cover the cost of screening mammograms. The decision to expand Medicaid was left to the individual states. Florida did not expand Medicaid coverage. Prior to the implementation of the ACA it was estimated that 25-35% of the residents of Miami-Dade County were uninsured or underinsured. By January 2017, more than 1.3 million Floridians had signed up for health insurance through the ACA. Currently almost one in five Americans receiving health coverage via Healthcare.gov or the Spanish language version, CuidadodeSalud.gov, resides in Florida. South Florida is home to the eight congressional districts with the highest concentrations of ACA enrollees in the US. The top 38 zip codes for ACA sign-ups in Florida are in South Florida. We postulated that evaluating the number of patients diagnosed, the stage at which they are diagnosed and the type of insurance used for the period of time 6 years before (2007-2012) and 4 years after the implementation of the ACA (2014-2017) should give a picture of the effect of the ACA on breast cancer diagnosis in an underserved population. Methods: A retrospective review of patients diagnosed with invasive and in situ breast cancer at the Breast Diagnostic Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital between 1/1/2007 – 12/31/2017 was approved by the University of Miami IRB. We collected data including: age, stage at diagnosis and type of insurance. In keeping with other similar studies, the year 2013 was excluded since it was a transition period. The trends were compared using ANOVA and chi-squared tests. Results: A total of 2155 patients were analyzed. The absolute number of patients with stage 0 seen every year remained stable (30 per year) throughout the time period. The percentage of patients with Stage 0 increased from 12.5% to 16.02% (p=0.049).Both the absolute number and percentage of patients with stage IV decreased, from 15 to 8 patients per year (6.42% to 4.12% (p=0.016)). The total number of patients diagnosed yearly with breast cancer decreased from 233 to 186 (p= 0.005). The absolute number and percentage of insured patients increased from 75 to 126 patients per year (23.5% to 38.3% (p= 0.02)). Conclusions: Fewer patients were diagnosed with breast cancer at the safety net hospital in Miami-Dade County after the initiation of the ACA. More patients had insurance and there was a stage shift towards lower stage at presentation. Availability of insurance to residents of Miami-Dade County decreased the burden on the safety net hospital and resulted in the diagnosis of lower stage breast cancer. Citation Format: Sandoval Leon AC, Ghanta S, Richardson A, Kesmodel S, Hurley J. The effect of the affordable care act on the initial stage of presentation of breast cancer in a safety-net hospital [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2018 Dec 4-8; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-13-03.

Economy-wide climate change impacts on green water droughts based on the hydrologic simulations

The impacts of climate change on green water drought and associated economic activity can be simulated with future climate projections, hydrologic models that predict drought indices based on reliable soil moisture, and historic relationships between drought indices and agricultural sector impacts. This study compares the potential impacts of climate change on future agricultural drought and economic conditions in a rural and an urban congressional district in Northern Virginia (VA). The Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model is applied to estimate a soil moisture index (SSI), which is then employed with historic and future climate data to generate SSI predictions. Economic impacts of future SSI changes are inferred from linear regression analysis of the historic relationship between annual mean SSI values and agricultural production values for a seven-year period (2010–2016). The two districts face similar future temperature and precipitation changes due to geographic proximity, but soil moisture, agricultural production and economy-wide responses to climate change differ considerably due to differences in land use and economic structure. In the more rural district, the mean value of drought occurrence increases 38%, while in the more urban district the increase is only 15%. Similarly, economy-wide agricultural sector value added decreases between 17% and 22% in the rural district and between 1 and 5% in the urban district. More studies are required to understand the impacts of adaption on agricultural and other economic sectors both rural and urban regions. More research should be carried out with an application of blue water droughts that have significant impacts to explain the economic impact of droughts.

Congressional districts: How “equal” are they?

Congressional redistricting is the process of delineating boundaries for districts in which voters elect members to the United States (U.S.) House of Representatives. Currently, state legislative bodies and committees may consider up to eight criteria when determining the boundaries of districts and this paper focuses on one of those criteria, equal population. Congressional districts (CDs) are drawn to provide quality representation for a large population and are often redrawn due to changes in population reflected by the decennial census. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that equal population refers to the total population of a state, rather than any subgroups (e.g. registered voters, voting eligible population) but did not dictate that states could not evenly distribute any subgroups as well. This paper discusses how eligible voters may be defined and their distributions in each state for the 113th Congress. States with a large proportion of children or prisoners were expected to have CDs with eligible voting populations deviated from the equal population counts, but the results show that populations of children and prisoners were not significant factors related to the deviations from equal population counts at the state level. However, the changes in population between 2000 and 2010, and the non-citizen and Hispanic populations were strongly and significantly associated with the deviations from the ideals.