Voter Theft in 2020

  The public disgrace called gerrymandering is voter theft. It keeps legislative incumbents in power, discriminates against minorities, and to some extent accounts for the polarization of our democratic system. The scholarly verdict is in: 

1. Candidates are less likely to run when their party has been disadvantaged by a districting plan. 

2. Candidates, who do run, often are less qualified, because of lack of competition. 

3. Supporters are less likely to contribute (for these three points see Stephanopoulos 2020), 

4. There is partisan unfairness in district drawing, and distortion of representation, which has a modest pro-Republican impact, and it is deliberate (See Stephanopoulos 2018), 

5. The prevailing party rigs the districts in their favor and reduces the other party’s power (see Kang). 

6. Gerrymandering in seven states accounted for the Republican Party’s manufactured majority in the U.S. House of Representations following the 2012 election (Engstrom 2020)

The United States Supreme court recently refused to protect the rights of voters. There has been long term legal protection of the rule of one person, one vote. The Court issued an opinion announcing that gerrymandering was just a “political question.” Not suitable for judicial review. That opinion created a judicial wasteland, which encourages state legislators to be bolder in their voter theft.   

California fixed the problem. Voters took the drawing of district lines away from the state legislature. Large voter majorities supported this surprising step.

The California Constitution provides for citizens to put initiatives on the ballot.  The people participate directly in government and can enact legislation and constitutional amendments. Californians took away one of the California legislature’s prized possessions: the power to draw congressional, state senate, and assembly district boundaries.  Districts are based on the ten-year Federal Census. The shift to a commission created a political earthquake in California. Suddenly the 120 members of the California legislature and the 53 members of congress (over 10% of America’s total members of congress) lost control of drawing their districts.  Political power in California was in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

This bamboozling has been going on for 200 years, since Eldridge Gerry, Governor of Massachusetts, reluctantly signed an oddly warped redistricting bill that linked his name to this political chicanery for eternity.   

When political parties have a majority in the state legislature after the federal census, they often draw byzantine maps of assembly, state senate, and congressional districts based on their knowledge of favorable registration and voting patterns that support their party. Because they draw their own districts, they favor themselves for reelection. Both parties are addicted to this political vote theft.  Political loyalties shape public opinion. We citizens cheer if our party gains greater control of the political system.

        In 2011, the California Redistricting Commissioners objectively shaped the future of California politics for the next 10 years.  Districts must be: 

1. As equal to each other in population as practicable,

2. Compact, meaning, having the minimum distance between all the parts of a constituency (a circle, square, or hexagon produce the most compact districts)

3. Contiguous, meaning, all parts of a district being connected at some point with the rest of the district,

4. Preserving political subdivisions, meaning, not crossing county, city, or town boundaries, 

5. Preserving communities of interest, meaning residents have common political interests. 

On the national level, because 37 states still allow legislatures to draw the congressional lines, no one knows how distorted the composition of the U.S. House of Representatives will be in 2022 and the following 10 years. The redistricting system in the United States is broken.

        Politicians are now preparing to gerrymander districts after the 2020 federal census. On March 6th 2020, when House Democrats introduced HR1 (known as the For the People Act), calling for ending partisan gerrymandering and creating a bipartisan Federal Redistricting Commission to draw all the congressional district lines, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell called the bill “socialist.”  Republican legislative control in 22 states will assure state political domination for ten years after the current census. No, it is not socialist to allow citizens to participate in government, especially when they do a more honest job. Of course, there was not a single socialist on the California Commission.

Each legislature in the country should follow California’s example and televise their redistricting proceedings, open the hearings to anyone who wants to testify, and show publicly the details of what they are doing. 

On May 20, 2020, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that voters who confined to their homes could not use Absentee ballots. The pandemic was not a disability. Power to the party is a political slogan that now infects too many of our institutions. 

        As Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) made clear, human nature in politicians feeds on power and retention in office. After the next census, legislators in 37 states will diminish citizen’s votes to benefit themselves. In the legal profession that is called a conflict of interest.  

JJB

Copyright 2020 James J Brosnahan