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Equal Votes, Equal Money: Court-Ordered Redistricting and Public Expenditures in the American States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2003

Stephen Ansolabehere
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139 (sda@mit.edu).
Alan Gerber
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 (alan.gerber@yale.edu).
Jim Snyder
Affiliation:
Professor, Departments of Economics and Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139 (millet@mit.edu).

Abstract

Court-ordered redistricting in the mid-1960s eradicated severe disparities in the populations of U.S. state legislative districts. We examine the geographic distribution of money by states to counties. Cross-sectional analysis shows that counties with relatively more legislativeseats per person prior to redistricting received relatively more transfers from the state per person. Over time, counties that lost legislative seats subsequently received a smaller share of state funds per capita. We calculate that population equalization significantly altered the flow of state transfers to counties, diverting approximately $7 billion annually from formerly overrepresented to formerly underrepresented counties, an effect missed by past studies. For those concerned with the design of democratic institutions around the world today, the American experience provides clear evidence of the political consequences of unequal representation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 by the American Political Science Association

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