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Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - A Black Falcon - 21st June 2017
I know I've said this before, but seriously, it's true.
Now, Tuesday, we saw the Democrats lose two more House special elections. I thought that would happen -- my guess was that Ossoff would lose narrowly in Georgia and that happened, unfortunately (thought 52-48 is a slightly wider loss than I thought it would be) -- but it's disappointing. I do need to say though, that the other special election most people weren't paying attention to, in South Carolina... the Republican won only 51-48, a three point margin! That's pretty impressive for South Carolina, and for a seat that Trump won by more than 20%. A loss is a loss, definitely, but it is a somewhat promising sign to see such large gains on how Democrats have done in those seats in recent decades. The 2018 general election still could potentially be pretty good for the Democrats...
...
But, as the thread title says, gerrymandering is a really serious problem in this country. Now, I know that it is not the only cause of Republican domination; demographic self-selection, how so many liberals live in cities while the larger countryside areas are more conservative is a major cause as well, as that leads to more Republican-leaning districts than Democratic. It is a huge one, though. Recently a Daily Kos article showed how in Pennsylvania for instance, while the Democrats won it for President every time from '92 to '12, and state-level races like governor and Senate went back and forth, Republicans gerrymandered themselves in a strong majority in the state house, and thus through redistricting in the states' US House of Representatives representation. Republicans have a stable 13-to-5 majority in PA's House representation, a margin which held up through the 2008 Obama election wave for example. 13 Republicans to 5 Democrats in an evenly divided state is absurd, but thanks to our broken political system which allows representatives to draw their own district lines it is a reality. There has alway been gerrymandering in this country of course, the term dates back to the colonial days of the 1700s, but computer technology that allows people to easily target down to the house which areas to put in each district for maximum control, gerrymandering is far more effective now than it ever has been before. As a result Republicans have a solid lock on most state houses and the US House despite usually losing the national popular votes in both categories, and that is a horrible reality which is dragging this country down -- the system is absurdly rigged against our side and that's a huge problem.
Yes, there are other huge factors helping Republicans -- old people are more conservative than the young and they are far more likely to vote than younger people are; Republicans are much more likely to go out and support whoever has the "R" next to their name, while Democrats argue and in-fight constantly unless they consider their candidate perfect; as mentioned earlier geographic self-selection is a huge issue because it makes it hard to not have maps with a larger Republican lean than they should have on a purely population-derived basis; voter suppression efforts, particularly aimed at minorities, are often successful; the degree of political polarization we have in this country now is damaging, for instance because it has led to a situation where I honestly wonder if the Republican Party would act against Trump even if a tape of him literally swearing loyalty to Putin leaked, or something; sexism is still a huge problem, as you see with how the right treats Hillary and Nancy Pelosi (and other leading Democratic women like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren as well); the electoral college badly needs to go; and more. Where is the major American effort to keep out Russian hacking of our election systems, like they are doing in France and Germany, for example? Or are we just going to let them in, to have them ... help us "manage" our democracy so that it becomes more like Russia's... yes, our political system has many problems now.
But despite all that, I do think that gerrymandering is the biggest issue America faces now, and is at the root of so many of our other problems. Polarization? That would be destructive in any situation today, but if most representatives had to face competitive elections every other year, instead of only a relative handful of them, it would make a HUGE difference. Because of geographic selection Dems would need to win more than their share of votes to win the House, but analysis has shown that the Dems would have won the House back, probably multiple times, since we lost it in 2010 if all districts nationwide were not gerrymandered... and just imagine how much of a difference that would have made, even if it did not change the Senate at all! Dems won a majority of votes cast nationwide in US House races in 2016, just to start. Just like with the Presidency since '92, Republicans only win because they game the system to win despite losing. In the case of the Electoral College, the best solution, a constitutional amendment, is nearly impossible. The easier route, getting a majority of EC votes can be brought to support the National Popular Vote compact, could work but those votes are not currently there, since Republicans dominate most states and have little interest in actual democracy anymore. And in the case of gerrymandering... well, there is a case that just went to the Supreme Court about gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Had the Republicans not stolen that Supreme Court seat last year I think it would probably go the way that is badly needed, towards turning over precedent and restricting gerrymandering, but with the court as it is... we need to rely on Kennedy to support major gerrymandering reform? It needs to happen for this nation to not continue slipping away from democracy; when elections don't matter because even when you win you lose anyway, that is not a healthy democracy!
Of course, without changing gerrymandering you could just win state legislatures again and then after the 2020 census un-gerrymander, or Democratic-gerrymander, the nation to get control back, but that is only a temporary solution that doesn't actually fix the problem, and rigging things our way is hardly an ideal solution anyway, what you want are fair elections! And anyway, of course, when so many states have such effective gerrymanders, such a thing is hardly likely.
So yeah, my expectations are low, but.. Supreme Court, please do something. The Court took one other gerrymandering case on this year, a case about North Carolina's very openly partisan and racist gerrymander. North Carolina's GOP is the most militantly excessive in the nation in all things voter / elected Democratic official suppression, and they have one of the many very strong Republican gerrymanders in what should be a competitive state. This was challenged, and the NC GOP's defense that it was just a party-based thing and not a racial one -- since racial gerrymanders are banned per federal law, beyond the required minority districts of course -- did not hold up in the Supreme Court because they decided that in a state like that race and party are so closely connected that they were pretty much the same. The shocker is, though, that Clarence Thomas (!) and the four liberals were the 5 in this 5-4 vote that decided NC's gerrymander went too far, and two districts will need to be completely redone... and thus the whole state's House of Representatives district map, probably. More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/05/in_cooper_v_harris_the_supreme_court_strikes_a_blow_against_racial_redistricting.html
Yes, Clarence Thomas, perhaps because of being a black man from the South, decided, despite his history of not caring about such things... for the liberal side on an issue of race and politics. That's fantastic, but that Kennedy did not also support him is a bad sign, and I doubt that, as great as the NC decision is for southern states, that signs are good for the even more important Wisconsin case upcoming (more info on that: https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-takes-on-gerrymandering-56f545f8ca02 ). Until this NC case the Supreme Court previously had always said that a gerrymander based on political party identification is legal. The problem is, in Wisconsin, or other states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and such, the racial element that won the day in North Carolina isn't a major factor, so you're just left with a question of partisan gerrymandering and whether it should be allowed. It is incredibly important that partisan gerrymandering is finally done away with, but will one of the right-wing group on the Court, most likely Kennedy but perhaps another, actually decide that way? All five of them supported a hold on enforcing the lower court decision against Wisconsin (that is, the lower court said that the gerrymander was illegal), so initial signs are not good. But again thanks to technology being as it is now so that it is easy to draw district lines that make it pretty much impossible for one party, usually Democrats, to ever win in most states in this country regardless of how the popular votes go. This needs to stop if we want American democracy to maybe, perhaps, stop falling apart as it seems to be. The Wisconsin case is extremely important, but will the Supreme Court actually change anything? I doubt it, but I want to be proven wrong.
This is not an issue of partisanship, of wanting Democrats to win instead of Republicans. With fair lines both parties would win sometimes, and that is fine. This is an issue of fairness, of still being a nation of freedom and democracy, the nation holding the "lamp at the golden door". You cannot be the great nation we are without free and fair elections.
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - Dark Jaguar - 21st June 2017
You've seen it too huh? Oklahoma has a problem with it too, as I've said a number of times before. It's not nearly so bad as some of the most extreme examples, but it has worked to undermine Tulsa and OKC's influence over state elections. Yes, there's no chance that Oklahoma is going to go completely blue, but it would certainly help if the cut of these districts didn't undermine local city issues all the time. The western panhandle in particular has a surprising amount of sway, considering just how few people actually live out there (it's the most rural part of the state).
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - A Black Falcon - 21st June 2017
Here in Maine it's not remotely close to as bad as it is in a lot of places in this country, fortunately, but perhaps there is a bit of it. So, in 2010, the year of the census, the Republicans won both houses of the state legislature and the Governorship (our fortunately soon to the term-limited out governor Paul LePage). They considered two possibilities for where the line between Maine's two US House seats should be, one which just slightly modified the current lines -- district 1 is the southern few counties, while district 2 is the rest of the state -- or another option which blew up that map and moved to a blatant gerrymander that had district 1 as the western section of the state, still including the southeast where most of the people (and liberals) live, and district 2 as the rest. I'm sure it was a complete cooincidence that District 1 Representative Chellie Pingree just happened to be in one of the towns moved over to district 2 in this second map... yeah, right.
However, after blowback from that second option, they ended up doing the first one, and only moving a few towns back and forth between the two districts. It wasn't an aggressive gerrymander, but they were trying to slightly redden district 2 and make district 1 slightly bluer, and this has happened. It would probably have happened anyway, but since 2010 northern Maine has gone hard right. They were the key behind LePage's victories in both 2010 and 2014, and despite having Democratic representatives in Congress for years in the '90s and '00s, now Bruce Poliquin, a Republican, is in his second term now and easily won last year. The changes in 2010 probably made his victory a bit easier than it would have been otherwise, so yeah, it probably would be fair to call it a mild gerrymander.
Compared to a lot of states, though, we're nowhere near as bad off as many are. Oh, and as far as the state level races go, this state hasn't devolved to the point of a North Carolina yet, so that part isn't gerrymandered, I don't believe. Maine has a big state House, as at 151 members it is not as big as New Hampshire's 400, but larger than most states; the state Senate is a fairly normal 35, though. Combined with our small populartion that means that each member represents a fairly small number of people, so an aggressive gerrymander would probably be tricky, but I'm sure it'd be possible if they really wanted to... fortunately the political will isn't there, and Democrats do control the state House now (and it's VERY close in the state Senate) so it'd be quite unlikely to pass.
So I mostly wrote this for those other states where gerrymandering is a much bigger problem, but so many key states are heavily gerrymandered now, almost all of those by Republicans and not Democrats (Illinois is one of the only states with an aggressive Democratic gerrymander) that it is a massive problem. The 2010 election was a crucial one here because that gave Republicans huge amounts of power in a lot of states in a census year, but the problem would exist regardless.
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - Dark Jaguar - 22nd June 2017
If the electoral college was abandoned or at least heavily moderated, every state would be a "key state". Or, I guess more accurately, none of them would be.
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - A Black Falcon - 22nd June 2017
So for a bit more on gerrymandering, had Ossoff been so lucky as to win, how long could Democrats have actually held the seat for?
I would say 2022, because after the 2020 election the Georgia Republicans (presuming they are still in power, which they almost certainly will be) will redo the electoral map, and redo the gerrymander so that things won't be as close next time. As a Georgia Republican said, that district is a gerrymandered seat and it is not supposed to be competitive... and they will do what they can to make things go back to that, because that's what Republicans particularly do, they push for every possible advantage they can no matter how undemocratic it is. (And I say 'Republicans' because Democrats very rarely come even close to being as aggressive about gerrymandering as Republicans do.)
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - Dark Jaguar - 23rd June 2017
Democrats are guilty of it though, so it pays to be vigilant in all cases to keep them as honest as possible. The most dangerous attitude in politics is "they're going to do it anyway, so we need to do this, at LEAST long enough to win, then, THEN we'll stop doing it".
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - A Black Falcon - 22nd July 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ruth-bader-ginsburg-gerrymandering_us_59736a9de4b00e4363dfd3c8?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313
It's good to know that Ginsburg considers this case important, I just really hope that we get a good result...
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - Dark Jaguar - 1st August 2017
Watching this attempt to deal with gerrymandering is about as fun as backtracking through a timed underwater escort mission.
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - A Black Falcon - 2nd August 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/upshot/its-time-to-end-the-old-debate-over-gerrymandering.html?_r=0
So Nate Cohn of the NY Times thinks that gerrymandering might play an even larger role than usual in 2018, in helping Republicans win seats they otherwise shouldn't. If the Dems win by a wide enough margin it is very possible to take the House, but gerrmyandering will definitely help them a lot and it's hard to understate how big of a problem that is for America. People who win elections should win! When they don't it damages democracy.
Gerrymandering is destroying America(n democracy) - Dark Jaguar - 2nd August 2017
Gerrymandering also hurts local communities, since it means people who by any reasonable measure are outside that community can control the election in that community. Austin is a good example here.