Gerrymandering Results in Legislature Unreflective of Voter Preferences

Good Governance

| December 3, 2024

Nevada witnessed historic returns in its 2024 election. Perhaps most visibly, the Republican presidential candidate received a majority of voter support for the first time since 2004. However, Republican candidates down ticket also received substantial voter support. In fact, Republican candidates for the state Assembly also received a majority of votes.

Despite that win, Democrats will return to Carson City next year commanding a 27-15 majority in the Assembly. While this result may appear undemocratic on its face, it results from the gerrymandering of legislative districts.

According to the official vote counts published by Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, Republican candidates for the Nevada Assembly garnered 684,381 votes statewide while Democrat candidates garnered 632,411 votes statewide. In other words, Republican candidates won by roughly 52,000 votes, or 4 percentage points.

So how did they wind up winning only about 1/3 of Assembly seats? That’s because of the way legislative districts are drawn.

How Nevada’s Electoral Districts Are Decided

Every 10 years—after each U.S. Census survey—lawmakers redraw the state’s electoral districts to apportion votes. In theory, each electoral district should represent roughly the same number of votes. If not, then citizens would be unequally represented at the legislature and in other levels of government in violation of their Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

However, the process of drawing these districts is controlled by the legislature itself. So, the party in control of the legislature at the time of redistricting is frequently able to build in an electoral advantage by drawing districts that favor them in some way—an advantage known as “gerrymandering.”

Nevada lawmakers last redrew the lines demarcating state Assembly, state Senate and Congressional districts in November 2021 before the election of current Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. The legislation authorizing these new districts was opposed by every Republican in the state legislature and supported by every Democrat before being signed into law by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak. That marked the first time in decades that one party was able to control the electoral districts without any input from the opposing party.

How Does Gerrymandering Work?

Typically, gerrymandering is accomplished by drawing districts that group large numbers of voters registered with the opposition party into a small number of districts and then spreading out the voters registered with the controlling party across a majority of the remaining districts. A quick review of the voter registration statistics by legislative district illustrates how this works.

In Assembly districts 33, 38 and 39, there are roughly three times as many registered Republicans as Democrats. In 25 Assembly districts, one party holds a registration advantage of at least 10 percentage points, meaning these districts were designed to be uncompetitive. That dynamic led the major parties to even forego putting up a candidate in four districts each.

Not only are the districts drawn to be uncompetitive, but they also fail badly in meeting the one-person, one-vote standard. The smallest Assembly district—won by Democrat Reuben D’Silva—includes just 40,775 registered voters. The largest Assembly district—won by Republican Danielle Gallant—includes 71,759. Nearly twice as many voters are grouped into Gallant’s district.

On average, 38.359 votes were cast for a major-party candidate in Assembly districts won by Republicans. In districts won by Democrats, that figure was 27,459. This discrepancy highlights how Democrats control nearly two-thirds of Assembly seats despite their candidates receiving fewer votes than Republicans.

Why is Gerrymandering a Problem?

Gerrymandering arguably produces very undemocratic results. While it is a tool to preserve the existing power structure, it also fails to imbue the ruling party with any sort of popular mandate. Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, for instance, will be in a position to negotiate with Gov. Joe Lombardo despite knowing that Lombardo carries a democratic mandate and his caucus does not. That limits the negotiating power and status of a majority caucus that does not represent the majority of voters.

There is no clear method to effectively overcome the effects of gerrymandering. Some states have experimented with independent redistricting commissions that are convened to draw lines objectively. Although those efforts haven’t always produced better results—because commissioners are often appointed by lawmakers—they at least communicate to voters that lawmakers care about the appearance of legitimacy.

What’s clear is that current legislative boundaries have failed to enshrine the popular will into the composition of the legislature. Regardless of who’s in control, lawmakers committed to democratic norms should be concerned about that.

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Geoffrey Lawrence

Geoffrey Lawrence is director of research at Nevada Policy. Lawrence has broad experience as a financial executive in the public and private sectors and as a think tank analyst. Lawrence has been Chief Financial Officer of several growth-stage and publicly traded manufacturing companies and managed all financial reporting, internal control, and external compliance efforts with regulatory agencies including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawrence has also served as the senior appointee to the Nevada State Controller’s Office, where he oversaw the state’s external financial reporting, covering nearly $10 billion in annual transactions. During each year of Lawrence’s tenure, the state received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Award from the Government Finance Officers’ Association. From 2008 to 2014, Lawrence was director of research and legislative affairs at Nevada Policy and helped the institute develop its platform of ideas to advance and defend a free society. Lawrence has also written for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with particular expertise in state budgets and labor economics. He was delighted at the opportunity to return to Nevada Policy in 2022 while concurrently serving as research director at the Reason Foundation. Lawrence holds an M.A. in international economics from American University in Washington, D.C., an M.S. and a B.S. in accounting from Western Governors University, and a B.A. in international relations from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He lives in Las Vegas with his beautiful wife, Jenna, and their two kids, Carson Hayek and Sage Aynne.