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INDIANA A new study from the Associated Press shows that Republicans won a greater share of seats than they did votes in many 2016 congressional and state races, a possible result of gerrymandering.

The study, which used a version of a mathematical formula created by University of Chicago law professor Nick Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee, a researcher at the nonpartisan Public Policy, also showed that Indiana Republicans enjoyed a partisan advantage in their races, although that isnt necessarily an indication of gerrymandering, McGhee said.

Gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral boundaries to give a particular political party an unfair advantage in elections.

Stephanopoulos and McGhee devised a score, called the efficiency gap, to measure how much of an advantage political parties are receiving in their races. The farther away the efficiency gap is from zero, the more of an advantage a political party enjoys.

The APs study, which McGhee said was conducted with his help, found that the efficiency gap for the 2016 Congressional races was 10.6 percent in favor of Republicans, while the efficiency gap for the state senate races was 4.76 percent.

While seemingly high, McGhee said that he prefers using an excess seat number, or the additional number of seats a party would win even if all parties were on equal vote footing, for Congressional races. McGhee and Stephanopoulos have settled on two or fewer excess seats as an acceptable advantage for a political party to hold in an election.

In Indianas case, less than one excess Republican seat, .95 of a seat, was possible in the 2016 Congressional election.

In the state races, however, McGhee cautioned against the 4.76 percent efficiency gap that the AP reported. While 8 percent is considered a worrisomely high efficiency gap by the researcher, McGhee has calculate Indianas state race efficiency gaps before and has found them to be much higher than what the AP found.

At the request of the state legislature, McGhee determined that Indiana had an efficiency gap of 13 percent in favor of house Republicans and 17 percent for senate ones in 2012. In 2014, he found that the efficiency gap was 7 percent in favor of house Republicans and 13 percent in favor of senate ones.

To make any claims about whether thats a problem requires more evidence, McGhee said.

States need to show that they cant redraw their district lines to ensure a fairer advantage for all political parties before their efficiency gap can be used as proof of gerrymandering, he said.

McGhee has not evaluated that side of Indianas districting situation.

Tom Sugar, a member of the special interim study committee on redistricting in Indiana is hopeful that using the efficiency gap as a marker could affect the future of partisan districts The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in October following a federal appeals court verdict that found Wisconsin Republicans were unconstitutional in their partisan gerrymandering.

The efficiency gap mechanism provides the test to show that the district, territories, land are being sliced and diced to ensure a particular partisan outcome, he said.

He said population and geography, not voter registration and political participation from areas should be used.

As a side project, Sugar has created a series of maps that show how the districts would look in Indiana compared to the districts drawn in 2011. They can be found on his website http://www.leadorleave.org.

Is this state more Republican than Democratic for the most part? Sure Indiana is a conservative state, he said. But it isnt 80 percent Republican.

He said the current districting system is not a fair picture of the people of Indiana.

It means that youre represented by a legislature that does not accurately affect the interest and needs of Hoosiers. It has become an out-of-whack, politically corrupt system.

He said the same is true in states where Democrats have drawn partisan districts.

The people dont pick their politicians now the politicians pick them, he said.

When you take the politics out and use population and geography and keep communities together you also enhance competitiveness. That means the people who represent those districts ... have to pay attention to something other than their primaries.

Read more:
Do Republicans in Indiana have an unfair advantage? - Newsandtribune