Mills' Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill was the other utilitarian philosopher whose work I have read these past two weeks. He wrote On Liberty in 1859, long after Bentham’s 1780 publication of Principles of Morals and Legislation. The time period, as well as significant differences in thought, are evident in a comparison of the two works.

As I have previously written, Bentham established utilitarian principles from the ground up, focusing on the careful calculus of comparing individuals’ pleasures and pains. Mill, on the other hand, focuses primarily on rights, implying the existence of some of the principles Bentham established.

Mill’s version of utilitarianism requires that individuals have the rights of free speech, free thought, and, for the most part, free action. Unless such acts might harm someone else, Mill contends a person should be as free in action as they are in opinion.

So what do these ideas have to do with redistricting? Mill’s version of utilitarianism lends yet another lens through which to analyze redistricting systems. A system that fails to give citizens equality in the strength of their votes would restrict their voices, and therefore would be deemed unacceptable under this philosophical framework. This disallows any gerrymandering, which inherently would reduce the strength of some citizens’ votes.

Bentham's Utilitarianism

One of the books I read this week was Jeremy Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation. In it, Bentham describes the principle of Utilitarianism. To him, this principle is all about the balance of pleasures and pains.

The idea is that an action should be measured by both the intentions and consequences of it. A good action is one that attempts to increase the pleasures or decrease the pains of a person it affects. The overall value of that action, then, can be measured by summing the outcomes it has for every affected person.

So how does this apply to redistricting? Adhering to Bentham's principles of utility necessitates majority-favoring districts. These districts would have to be drawn with maximum compactness, and with no regard for communities of interest. Bentham's ideas would strongly oppose both racial, and partisan gerrymandering, because both types work to strengthen the political power of certain groups beyond what their population figures would prescribe.
 

Why Study Philosophy?

As I have hinted at before, there is no easy way to define fair redistricting. District maps may have strange shapes, or unusual racial demographics, but these things alone do not give clear criteria for defining a fair system.

This is where philosophy comes in. To come up with fairness criteria, I must answer questions like: “Should communities of interest (e.g. African-American communities in the South) be separated among many districts, or kept together in just a few?”, “Should counties be seen as individual communities?”, and “Should redistricting be used as a tool to protect the will of political minorities?” 

I will develop answers to these questions (based on my own opinion) by studying various political philosophies.