Congressional Seats Research Articles

The Empty Chair. The Loss of Congressional Seats in Colombia Due to Corruption and Criminal Ties

Objective/context: This article has three objectives: to differentiate the theoretical arguments on the empty chair policy in Latin America, to analyze the process of institutional change that culminated with its implementation in Colombia, and to describe how it has been carried out between 2010 and 2024. Methodology: The methodological approach has three components: a theoretical part, a documentary component, and an empirically based analysis. The first describes the contrast between two approaches to the autonomy, control, and accountability of political parties and parliamentarians. The second reviews how these approaches are reflected in the rules on seat ownership (of parties or congresspersons/deputies), accountability, and sanctions for parties and congresspersons when they violate the law. The third consists of identifying cases of loss of seats, their analysis, and the determination of their effects. The principal sources of the study are constitutional reforms, Supreme Court rulings, and decisions of the Attorney General’s Office on convictions of congressmen. The information is complemented with journalistic reports and electoral data. Conclusions: The empty chair policy is established in two Latin American countries (Colombia and Peru). It is an effective legal norm to sanction political parties and legislators convicted for their links with criminal groups, corruption, electoral fraud, and other crimes. It has been applied in eighteen cases due to links to paramilitarism, drug trafficking, and corruption. The affected parties have decreased their electoral performance and their seats in Congress. Originality: This is the first empirical study on the subject in Colombia.

In the Shadow of Trump: The 2022 Midterm Elections

In the months leading up to the 2022 midterms, Republicans believed a variety of factors were working in their favor including inflation and overall state of the economy, redistricting, and Biden’s low levels of public approval. After the electoral dust settled, Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, but actually lost a seat in the Senate. Why did Republicans fail to fully capitalize on the specific midterm conditions that historically have favored the out-party? This paper examines the results of the 2022 primary and general elections, identifies electoral trends and themes, and considers the implications of the results in terms of prior congressional election research. Based on aggregate election data and survey-based evidence, it appears that former President Trump’s enduring shadow over the midterms and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case hindered the Republicans’ ability to win a larger share of seats in Congress.

A New Perspective on Impartial and Unbiased Apportionment

How to fairly apportion congressional seats to states has been debated for centuries. We present an alternative perspective on apportionment, centered not on states but “families” of states, sets of states with “divisor-method” quotas with the same integer part. We develop “impartial” and “unbiased” apportionment methods. Impartial methods apportion the same number of seats to families of states containing the same total population, whether a family consists of many small-population states or a few large-population states. Unbiased methods apportion seats so that if states are drawn repeatedly from the same distribution, the expected number of seats apportioned to each family equals the expected divisor-method quota for that family.

Feminists Against Authoritarianism

Feminists Against Authoritarianism Meaghan Winter (bio) Last summer, soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansans turned out in record numbers to reject a ballot amendment that would have stripped the right to abortion from the state's constitution. The overwhelming "no" vote—59 to 41 percent—was followed by similarly promising results in the midterm elections. In November, voters in Michigan, California, and Vermont affirmed the right to legal abortion, and Kentuckians and Montanans rejected anti-abortion amendments. Support for abortion rights helped Democrats win up and down the ballot. Across the country, Americans asserted what advocates have known for years: if voters could decide, abortion would be legal. These victories have been much celebrated—and for good reason. The amendments that enshrined legal abortion are helping women and pregnant people access lifesaving healthcare. They also demonstrate that Democrats can loudly endorse abortion rights and win. The unequivocal results from Kansas, Michigan, and Kentucky should theoretically offer cautionary tales for anti-abortion politicians: you'd think it would be difficult for an elected official to criminalize abortion and keep his seat. But the way we lost Roe illustrates the limits of such wins. Back in 2011, Mississippi voters resoundingly—58 to 42 percent—rejected a state-wide ballot amendment that would have defined personhood from the moment of conception. But the Republican legislature kept discussing bills designed to ban abortion and passing laws that made it more difficult for physicians to perform the procedure. In 2018, the state legislature passed a law banning abortion after fifteen weeks. Even though lower courts uniformly decided that the ban was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court took the case, and in June last year, the new conservative majority upheld the Mississippi law and overturned Roe. Three days later, the Mississippi attorney general certified the state's trigger law, banning abortion in the state. The implications are clear: minority rule is a major obstacle to ensuring abortion rights. [End Page 49] As Lisa Corrigan, an expert on social movements and Professor of Communication and Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, said last year, "There are no minority rights when the minority rules. Restrictions on voting rights and erosion of freedom of speech are essential to state rule. . . . The political minority is where the authoritarian impulses find expression." In other words, when officials can act without public approval, they can further disenfranchise people who already have less power, including women and Black voters. Many Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing openly undemocratic rhetoric and policy, including endorsing voter suppression laws. And since the 1990s, Republican operatives have become more strategic about gerrymandering political maps. These strategies, which they accelerated in 2010 and 2020 (pivotal redistricting years), have given white, rural voters and their chosen lawmakers disproportionate power in Congress and state legislatures, incentivizing Republican leadership in states like Mississippi to favor fringe partisans when they set their agendas. In states such as Florida and Ohio, it is now functionally impossible for voters to swing control of the state legislature from Republicans, at least in the near future. Meanwhile, in November, Democrats lost control of the House—and any possibility of codifying Roe in Congress—by seven seats, after Florida drew maps that enabled Republicans to pick up four new congressional seats and the Supreme Court blocked orders from lower courts to force Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana to draw new majority-Black districts to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. At the same time, the Republican Party (with the assistance of the Federalist Society) has filled the federal judiciary and Supreme Court with unelected ideologues who hold lifetime appointments. Unless national Democratic leaders make dramatic changes to the Court and its authority, including expanding the number of justices, those judges are poised to spend decades setting national precedents by upholding laws enacted by semi-autocratic state governments. With these problems in mind, I want to highlight another ballot amendment as a cause for hope. In 2018, Michigan voters approved an initiative that reformed the redistricting process so that citizens—not political officials and their operatives—controlled the map-drawing process. Previously, Michigan was one of the most gerrymandered states...

Barred by Congress: How a Mormon, a Socialist, and an African American Elected by the People Were Excluded from Office

Barred by Congress: How a Mormon, a Socialist, and an African American Elected by the People Were Excluded from Office

El Congreso de los Estados Unidos. Un largo predominio demócrata: 1933-1981

For nearly 50 years, from 1933 to 1981, Democrats held a majority of seats in Congress. One could argue whether that period of time should be regarded as one or several, but the fact remains that, during that time, American society experienced some profound transformations that established the foundations for that society as it is today. Until the 1930s, despite internal, partisan and ideological divides, the U.S. were profoundly conservative. All political power was in the hands of a white, male, Protestant majority, while women and ethnic and religious minorities had a very small participation. By the early 1980s, that situation had substantially changed, and Congress did not escape those changes. Also, over those 50 years, the U.S. Congress –like many other legislatures- had to deal with the unstoppable onslaught of the administrative state, boosted by the 1930s crisis –even though it had started before that date, as a result of new doctrines that demanded more state intervention in the economy. None of those circumstances, however, caused the U.S. Congress to lose continuity or institutional relevance.

Experience, institutions, and candidate emergence: the political career returns to state legislative service

AbstractMore than half of the current members of the US Congress served in their state legislature prior to holding federal office. We quantify the relationship between state legislative service and career progression to Congress. Using close elections for exogenous assignment of political experience across otherwise similar candidates, we show that serving in the state legislature more than doubles an individual's probability of eventually contesting a Congressional seat relative to a similar candidate who lost in a comparable election; it also doubles the individual politician's probability of eventually winning a Congressional seat. State legislatures thus create national politicians out of otherwise marginal political entrants. We then show that the effect of state legislative service on career progression is larger in more professionalized legislatures, highlighting the role of institutions in facilitating political career progression. Our results hold important implications for representation and accountability, and confirm that prevailing institutions can affect political selection via career progression.

Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition by Jane Ann Moore and William F. Moore

Reviewed by: Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition by Jane Ann Moore and William F. Moore Rochelle E. Danquah Jane Ann Moore and William F. Moore. Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. 254 pp. $28.00 (paper). With the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the Confederation Congress prohibited slavery in the states that would become the Midwest. Nonetheless, slavery did exist in midwestern states. The state of Illinois, for example, subjected African Americans to Black Codes, servitude contracts, racial mob violence, and other forms of White terrorism. Shadrach Bond, the state's first governor, owned several enslaved African Americans. Against this backdrop of blatant support for an institution supposedly banned since 1787, forces began organizing to abolish slavery in Illinois and the United States. Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition explores the relationship among, and inner workings of, three groups that formed an alliance to end slavery. Authors Jane Ann Moore and William F. Moore claim politicians and White abolitionists such as Owen Lovejoy, African Americans, and women all "agreed to put abolition ahead of the other needed reform movements of the day and decided that the constitutional political system offered the best way to break the spell of the Slave Power" (1). As early as 1824, proslavery legislators attempted to legalize slavery in [End Page 83] Illinois. Unsuccessful, they continued to make the state an unwelcoming space for African Americans. The authors acknowledge that African Americans were "the primary instigators of the antislavery movement [in Illinois]" (6), but proslavery agitators responded with "physical violence" to perpetuate White supremacy. Most famously, Lovejoy's older brother Elijah was murdered by a proslavery mob in Alton for publishing an antislavery newspaper. Lovejoy's coalition "responded with political activism, building a succession of political parties that envisioned practical and progressive legislation on behalf of African Americans, ultimately becoming the operative radical core of the Republican Party" (5). Owen Lovejoy's leadership, uncompromising antislavery sentiments, and pervasive political activism—in conjunction with African Americans, clergy, and women—helped to transform racial barriers and unjust policies in America. Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality consists of nine chapters that encompass Lovejoy's life as an abolitionist, politician, and revolutionary Christian organizer from 1811 to 1864. Chapters 1 through 3 describe Lovejoy's life from childhood to young adulthood and the experiences that shaped his antipathy toward slavery. In Chapter 2, the authors claim Lovejoy "had a transforming experience" while working with African American ministers Henry Highland Garnet, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and Charles B. Ray at the 1843 Liberty Party convention. These men showed Lovejoy an example of Black agency, and they clearly demonstrated that African Americans, whether free or enslaved, were capable of determining and defining their demands for freedom, justice, and equality. This example of Black advocacy became a pivotal teaching moment in Lovejoy's life that would continue to have a profound impact on his religious conviction and radical antislavery opinions. Chapters 4 through 6 concentrate on Lovejoy's political career in Illinois and his antislavery coalition that grew with the support of African Americans and women between 1852 and 1859. He was instrumental in organizing the Republican Party in Illinois, forging a close friendship with Abraham Lincoln. In 1856, Lovejoy won a congressional seat and immediately started working to repeal proslavery laws. The authors argue that "Lovejoy expanded the Illinois coalition with Black clergy and leading women at the national level" to continue the fight for abolition (132). Chapters 7 and 8 discuss Lovejoy's political career and the coalition's continued efforts to eradicate slavery from 1859 to 1864. During this period, he continued to serve in the House of Representatives, and he steadfastly [End Page 84] supported Lincoln even when Confederate military victories and northern Democrats threatened the president's political fortunes. This section of the book examines in great detail his efforts to move beyond merely ending slavery as he "pushed legislation reflecting the priorities of Blacks, women, and churchmen in the coalition for equality" (175). Jane...

The Current Political Challenges to the Mexican Democratisation Process: 2012 to 2018

This paper will attempt to answer what the current state of contemporary democracy in Mexico is after the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) to the presidency by analysing the role of Civil Society, Political Society and the Rule of Law from 2012 to 2018. This paper will also explore if the party’s return was indeed a step backwards in the process of Mexican democratisation, or whether it was simply another step on a long road in which the various political parties alternate power. In 2018, Mexico elected its new president for the next consecutive 6 years along with a fair number of congressional seats and local gubernatorial posts, an election that again put Mexican democracy through a difficult test.

The impact of political representation on the provision of public goods and services

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate the impact of political representation in Congress in Brazil on the local provision of public goods and services. Relying on a fixed effects model, plus the fact that the electoral system generates some random variation in the political representation across terms and municipalities, we find a positive and significant effect of political representation on health and school outcomes. For instance, in health, the results indicate that one additional seat in Congress representing a municipality decreases the share of low birth weight newborns by 0.06 percentage points. When looking at school outcomes, the share of schools with access to the Internet increases by 0.63 percentage points. Moreover, the results suggest that ‘pork‐barrel’ politics is one potential mechanism explaining this improvement in the provision of public goods and services.

Channeling Water Conflicts through the Legislative Branch in Colombia

This paper answers the question: has the Colombian Congress been effective at addressing relevant water conflicts and making them visible? While courts and social movements have been key for the advancement of social rights in Latin America, the role of legislators remains unclear. We conduct content analysis of all water-related bills, proposed bills, and constitutional amendments filed in Colombia from 1991 to 2020; we also analyzed Congress hearings of political control related to water, and the statutes of political parties who hold majority of seats in Congress; we also conducted interviews with key actors on water governance in Colombia. We find that only three bills have passed in the 30-year time frame and that relevant water conflicts have not been addressed by Colombian legislators. We find that water conflicts are not reaching the political agenda of Congress, yet through political control hearings, it has given some late visibility to critical territorial conflicts in which water is a key element. We analyze our data in light of literature on legislative politics and legal mobilization in Latin America. This study adds to global research on the role of legislators in advancing the human right to water, particularly in Latin America.

Reapportioning the U.S. Congress: The shifting geography of political influence

Following each U.S. decennial census, congressional seats are reapportioned in pursuit of numerically equal districts. These shifts in congressional district populations have implications for representation in Congress that have not been systematically documented. Drawing upon redistricting cycles from 1960 through the most recent cycle in 2010, we compare the districts that have been removed due to population loss or slow growth with the locations that have seen the highest rate of population increase, indicative of the need for new seats. We find that certain populations—namely highly urban, minority, the native born, and those employed in declining economic sectors—are on the losing end of this seat reallocation process, while other populations—highly mobile, less urban, and white—are the sources of seat gains. Population growth rates are not singly responsible for the location of new or lost congressional seats. Not only does this research offer a comprehensive look at the demographic considerations that accompany congressional reapportionment, but also considers larger questions of how representation changes in Congress as seat losses and gains accumulate.

Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism

Congress should enact a law requiring a candidate for a seat in Congress to receive a majority of votes in order to win the election. Congress should let states determine what particular procedure to use to determine whether a candidate wins a majority, as there are significantly different methods of identifying a majority winner. While this simple piece of legislation might seem inconsequential—many Americans assume, erroneously, that elections already require majority winners—it in fact would cause states to undertake a form of experimentation in the details of electoral system design that would have the effect of counteracting the threat that anti-democracy extremism currently poses in America.

Understanding Nativist Elements Relating to Immigration Policies and to the American Constitution’s Natural Born Citizen Clause

INTRODUCTION: I start with a definition. A “nativist” element of a legal system is one which preserves some benefit for, all or some of, the nation’s citizens or its indigenous inhabitants, as opposed to granting that benefit neutrally to citizens and immigrants alike. Not so long ago the essential morality of such a distinction was considered so obvious that no defense was thought to be necessary. Indeed, in many traditional societies there is no distinction between the indigenous inhabitants (that is, the people) and the nation. Any attempt by a government to treat newcomers equally in all respects would have been akin to incomprehensible. Today, in the West, there is a growing view that all such distinctions are actual or tantamount to invidious racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. Still such distinctions have long-standing bona fides — even in Western societies. For example, under the United States Constitution (1787), all elected federal officials in the national government must be held by citizens. Members of the diet’s lower chamber must be 25 years old, be an inhabitant of the state in which they are elected, and have held citizenship for at least 7 years. Similarly, members of the upper chamber must be 30 years old, be an inhabitant of the state in which they are elected, and have held citizenship for at least 9 years. Like holding a congressional seat, eligibility to hold the presidency and vice presidency requires that the candidate meets an age requirement (at least 35 years old) and a residency requirement (at least 14 years in the United States). However, unlike holding a congressional seat, eligibility to hold the presidency and vice presidency is limited to natives, or more properly, using the language of the United States Constitution, to “natural born citizen[s]” — a person who is born in the United States and a citizen since birth. This essay asks two related questions: Is a society justified in distinguishing citizens and immigrants? Is a society justified in distinguishing citizens from birth from those who become citizens subsequently through naturalization? CONCLUSION: The efforts of the modern commentators to explain the Natural Born Citizen Clause as one rooted in bigotry and prejudice directed at naturalized citizens is the product of an intellectual milieu of large, powerful countries, where there is no memory of bombs falling on the nation’s core territory or any existential fear of conquest by foreign powers. The concern of these authors is merely the fair distribution of society’s benefits and opportunities, between citizens and immigrants. The “other,” to the extent he exists at all, is just a person who has not yet become or who has not yet been allowed to become an American. Modern theories of separation of powers and constitutional design have little or nothing to do with the Framers’ and Founders’ world of revolutions and imperial wars—where oceans and frontiers pose dangers—as you yourself pose dangers to others—where others may burn down your capital as you may burn down theirs. The Natural Born Citizen Clause was the limited policy response of a People who believed that beyond one’s national frontier was a dangerous world. That the clause’s purpose is no longer widely understood indicates that much has changed since 1787.

Explaining Uncontested Seats in Congress and State Legislatures

A fundamental requirement of democracy is the existence of contested elections. Our study documents and explains trends in uncontested seats in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures over time. We uncover a striking inconsistency in the health of elections: the frequency of uncontested seats in Congress has declined while the frequency of uncontested seats in state legislatures has actually increased. To explore these divergent trends, we consider factors that are common to both Congress and state legislatures such as the redistricting cycle but also variables that are unique to the state level. Our analysis points to the relative “flippability” of Congress compared to many state legislatures as a factor behind diverging levels of contestation. While many state legislatures have become bastions for dominant parties, congressional districts in those same states are often nonetheless viewed as enticing targets because they contribute to control of the federal government.

The Role of Gender Stereotypes in a Political Campaign:

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender stereotypes as a mechanism that maintains the under representation of women within elected office. Focusing exclusively on American politics, this paper will explore the barriers female candidates face in running for office. In 2019, the percentage of women holding seats is 23.7 %. This statistic indicates that women occupy 127 of the 535 seats in Congress. Although a record breaking high, this amount still remains far from achieving parity within Congress. To explore women’s under representation, I ask what is the impact gender stereotypes have on a female’s candidacy? Exploring how gender stereotypes influence both voter preferences and the attitudes of party leaders, I predict that gender stereotypes can discourage both voters and party leaders from pursuing female candidates. Based on my research findings, I argue that the gender gap in political representation is in fact largely rooted in the campaign process that has and continues to present barriers for women seeking elected office.

The Meanest Man in Congress: Jack Brooks and the Making of an American Century by Brendan McNulty and Tim McNulty

Reviewed by: The Meanest Man in Congress: Jack Brooks and the Making of an American Century by Brendan McNulty and Tim McNulty Craig Goodman The Meanest Man in Congress: Jack Brooks and the Making of an American Century. By Brendan McNulty and Tim McNulty. (Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2019. Pp. xviii, 556. $32.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-321-1.) Using the personal archives of Representative Jack Brooks, Democrat of Texas, Brandon McNulty and Tim McNulty have written an interesting and important biography of an influential yet little-known member of Congress. Brooks was first elected to Congress in 1952 and represented southeastern Texas [End Page 538] until his defeat in 1994. Brooks’s career epitomized what Kenneth A. Shepsle describes as the “Textbook Congress,” where committees and their chairs were powerful actors but congressional leaders exercised less direct control over the House of Representatives (“The Changing Textbook Congress,” in John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson, eds., Can the Government Govern? [Washington, D.C., 1989], pp. 238–66). Brooks’s career unfolded against broader changes occurring in party politics that culminated in the realignment of white conservatives in the South that eventually cost Brooks his seat in Congress and that continues to affect American politics today. The career of Jack Brooks vividly illustrates the central role of the legislative branch in the American system of separated institutions sharing powers. Members of Congress are both representatives and lawmakers. Brooks embraced both roles during his long congressional career as he directed benefits to his congressional district while playing a critical role shaping public policies and challenging presidents of both parties. Like Lyndon B. Johnson, Brooks quickly figured out how to build relationships by figuring out what other members needed, and he learned the critical art of bargaining and compromise essential in a collective body. Political entrepreneurship is vital, as members decide how to allocate their resources and build relationships allowing them to exercise influence over public policies, and Brooks excelled at this part of the legislative game. Especially between 1973 and 1994, Brooks was one of the most effective members of the House of Representatives, often outperforming his expected legislative effectiveness and routinely ranking among the most effective Democrats. He aggressively championed consumer rights and often challenged corporations to change their policies; he was a pivotal figure in high-profile investigations such as Watergate and Iran-Contra, but Brooks was also the driving force promoting the adoption of computers in Congress so that the legislative branch could perform its work more efficiently. Using NOMINATE data, we can see that Brooks routinely remained more liberal than two-thirds of the Democratic caucus throughout his career, even as the political environment was beginning to change around him. Brooks was a liberal Democrat, and a loyal Democrat, who often supported his party 90 percent of the time. Brooks worked with the party leadership, especially Sam Rayburn, when it would be beneficial, but he was not afraid to buck party leaders when it was in the best interests of his district. Today a centralized and powerful leadership directs much of the activity in the House of Representatives. Ultimately, the changing political environment of Texas caught up with Brooks, as he lost his 1994 reelection campaign. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, white southerners began leaving the Democratic Party, and the 1970s was marked by high levels of split-ticket voting. As voters aligned their ideological and partisan preferences, the Republican Party replaced the Democratic Party as the dominant political party in the South, which contributed to increasing political polarization in the United States. Brooks remained a staunch liberal, but like other white Democrats representing rural areas of the South, his kind would become extinct. [End Page 539] Change is constant in American politics, and the biography of Representative Jack Brooks illustrates important changes in our nation. Brooks’s career spanned a period that may prove to have been an anomaly rather than the norm in American political history, characterized by substantive lawmaking instead of message politics (see Frances E. Lee, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign [Chicago, 2016]). For people concerned about the separation of powers, the story of Jack...

The Penalty Clause & the Fourteenth Amendment’s Consistency on Universal Representation

Many judges and scholars have read Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment as evidence of the Constitution’s commitment to universal representation — the idea that representation should be afforded to everyone in the political community regardless of whether they happen to be eligible to vote. Typically, this analysis starts and stops with Section Two’s first clause, the Apportionment Clause, which provides that congressional seats are to be apportioned among the states on the basis of “the whole number of persons in each State.” Partly on this basis, the lead opinion in Evenwel v. Abbott rejected the argument that “One Person, One Vote” requires states to equalize the number of adult citizens when drawing legislative districts, affirming that states can draw districts with equal numbers of persons. But skeptics of the universal representation theory of the Fourteenth Amendment, most notably Justice Samuel Alito, have complained that this analysis is flawed because it ignores Section Two’s less-known and never-enforced second clause: the Penalty Clause. Under the Penalty Clause, states that deny or abridge the right to vote of otherwise qualified citizens are penalized with a reduction of their congressional representation. Any theory of representation from the Fourteenth Amendment, the skeptics argue, must grapple with all of Section Two. This Essay takes up that call and explains how the Penalty Clause is not only consistent with but reinforces the Fourteenth Amendment’s broader commitment to universal representation. Contrary to common misconceptions about the Penalty Clause, the Clause is structured so that the state as a whole loses representation in Congress, but no individual within the state is denied representation. In other words, the Penalty Clause does nothing to upend Section Two’s advancement of universal representation. If anything, the Penalty Clause actually reinforces Section Two’s commitment. By reducing a state’s representation proportionally, it contemplates the representational interests of nonvoters, a key feature of the universal representation theory. The Evenwel majority’s reading of Section Two is correct. Section Two counts and represents everyone — and the Penalty Clause does nothing to change that.

The Current Political Challenges to the Mexican Democratisation Process

This paper will attempt to answer what the current state of contemporary democracy in Mexico is after the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the presidency by analysing the role of Civil Society, Political Society and the Rule of Law from 2012 to 2018. This paper will also explore if the party’s return was indeed a step backwards in the process of Mexican democratisation, or whether it was simply another step on a long road in which the various political parties alternate power. In 2018, Mexico elected its new president for the next consecutive 6 years along with a fair number of congressional seats and local gubernatorial posts, an election that again put Mexican democracy through a difficult test.

How Many Seats in Congress Is Control of Redistricting Worth?

How large a benefit is partisan control of the redistricting process? Do legal constraints on redistricting—such as the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act—alter this benefit? Are institutions designed to reduce the benefit to partisan control—such as redistricting commissions—effective? To measure the effects of partisan districting on the electoral fortunes of the parties, we collect data on the partisan composition of state government, House election outcomes, and moderating institutions over an 80‐year period. Our results suggest that over time, both parties have benefited from unified control, with the effects largest in states where voters were evenly divided among the parties and smallest in states where the controlling party had a large advantage in the electorate. The effects have changed over time, with both parties having equally benefited from control during the middle of the 20th century, the benefit largely disappearing in the late part of the century, and the Republican Party seeing a moderate advantage from control in the current century. The benefits of partisan control were not diminished in states with redistricting commissions. The preclearance requirement appears to have hurt the Democratic Party except when its vote share was very low. The aggregate effects of partisan redistricting are moderate in magnitude—in the modern period, this effect has typically been less than 10 House seats, with the last election where control of the House would have flipped in expectation occurring in 1954.