"In a glorious way that makes it easier to cram ALL of the Dem garbage in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties into only four districts. Is there anyone on our side who doesn’t recognize that dynamic?" - Michigan Republican congressional aide Jack Daly, in a 2011 email describing the Republican strategy to solidify control of most of Michigan's congressional seats.
When the Republican state legislature redrew the state's 14 US House seats in 2011, it gave the work of drawing new borders to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and other consultants. Publicly, the Chamber says it only seeks fairness and doesn’t support gerrymandering. Privately of course, it cheerfully assures Republicans, "We’ve spent a lot of time providing options to ensure we have a solid 9-5 delegation in 2012 and beyond." And the Republican party's State Leadership Committee isn't at all shy about boasting of their ability to gerrymander, noting, "Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress." It should also be noted that the state legislature itself is heavily gerrymandered, with large Republican majorities elected in 2012 despite despite the fact that voters preferred Democratic state legislative candidates over Republicans by an 8-point spread that year.
This is nothing we haven't seen in other Republican-led states. In Michigan however, stealing control of the state legislature and the state's congressional majority was not nearly enough for Republicans. In recent years Michigan Republicans have gone a long way towards concentrating unprecedented power in the hands of the state's Governor. And they've done so in a way that is deeply racist (surprise, surprise). From staff blogger Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos,
"Republicans therefore concocted a scheme to circumvent elected local governments by having the state appoint so-called "emergency managers" to take control of local financial decisions. It was a perfect display of cynicism: Republicans in the state capital have spent years starving Detroit and other cities financially, thus paving the way for these emergency managers to swoop in and undermine pensions, promote education privatization, and dismantle public services.
The emergency manager law proved so unpopular that Michigan voters repealed it at the ballot in 2012. In response, Republicans, with their gerrymander-protected majorities, simply passed the law a second time, and added a small fiscal appropriation that rendered it immune from a ballot-box veto. (Spending laws can’t be overturned by voters via referendum.) And that’s not the only case where Republicans have over-ridden the the public’s will: They recently passed—again, with a fig-leaf appropriation—a repeal of straight-ticket voting that would likely lengthen voting lines in urban, heavily minority precincts. Guess what? Voters had previously rejected precisely such an effort at the ballot box, just as they did with emergency managers.
So what do these anti-democratic measures have to do with Flint’s current crisis, where lead has poisoned children and made tap water unusable for 100,000 people? It turns out that (Republican Governor) Snyder’s government had installed an emergency manager to usurp Flint’s fiscal policy authority. At the state’s direction, that emergency manager made the decision to switch from Detroit’s water system to contaminated Flint River water, even though the move would not save money. Instead, it would help undermine Detroit’s water system and pave the way toward its eventual privatization."
The Michigan Civil Rights Commission concluded in 2017 that the emergency manager law is intrinsically discriminatory, and that it deepens the disparity between poor urban and affluent suburban communities. The Commission said, "If you live in Michigan, there is a 10 percent chance that you have lived under emergency management since 2009. But if you are a black Michigander, the odds are 50/50," "In short, the EM law as applied far too often addresses the problems of already financially stricken governments in second-class communities, segregated based on race, wealth and opportunity, by appointing an emergency manager whose toolbox is filled with short term solutions that are contrary to the long term interests of the people living there."
Despite all this, there's hope for a better future. Merrit Kennedy of NPR noted in late 2016, "Michigan's attorney general has announced felony charges against two former emergency managers of Flint, Mich., and two other former city officials. The charges are linked to the city's disastrous decision to switch water sources, ultimately resulting in widespread and dangerous lead contamination." Current polls also show that Democrat Gretchen Whitmer has a strong chance of being elected Governor this year. I wonder how Republican-dominated areas in Michigan feel about a new Governor abolishing home rule in their towns in favor of "emergency managers"?
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Nine: Republican Tyranny in North Carolina
When it comes to destroying Democratic institutions, nobody does it quite like North Carolina Republicans. Gerrymandering, racist voter ID laws, closing the polling places - sure, Republicans are doing all that in the Tarheel state, but they're bringing so much more to the game.
From a Time magazine article by Wendy Weiser and Daniel Weiner called, Democracy in North Carolina Could Disappear. Is Your State Next?:
In 2016, "the incumbent Republican Governor lost his reelection bid to Democrat Roy Cooper. Then things turned ugly. Seventeen days before Cooper was to take office, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a package of sweeping changes designed to limit his authority, which the outgoing Republican governor signed into law. The centerpiece of this effort was a plan to ensure continued Republican dominance of powerful state and county boards of elections, which are responsible for running elections in the state and have been controlled by appointees from the Governor’s party for more than a century. (The original law was struck down by a state court in March but then reenacted over Cooper’s veto with only minor changes.)
The new law extends the tenure — indefinitely, for all intents and purposes — of the sitting Republican-appointed Executive Director of the State Board of Elections, North Carolina’s leading election official. She would otherwise have been supplanted by a new Democratic appointee. The law also awards half the seats on state and local election boards to Republicans, which allows them to block any changes to voting rules adopted by the previous Republican-controlled bodies. The law even says Republicans get to chair all election boards during every crucial election year when the President, Governor and all statewide officials are on the ballot.
These changes leave little doubt as to who would really be in charge of North Carolina’s election process — and that is the point. Some legislative leaders openly admitted that one of their main goals of the election board law was to keep Republicans in power."
So in other words, because a Democrat managed to get elected Governor, the Republican sate legislature changed the laws to keep other Republicans in power, and they weren't shy about it. Nor have Republicans limited recent changes to the powers delegated to the Governor to elections boards. They also passed a law that requires that all cabinet appointments be approved by the legislature and that limits the number of state employees the governor can hire and fire to 425. The old limit was 1,500 and was increased from 400 around the time Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office. Yes, the Republican legislature will cheerfully increase the Governor's powers when a Republican takes over from a Democrat, they reduce them again when another Democrat wins the office.
What else have North Carolina Republicans been up to? How about:
* A 2013 law that made cuts to early voting, created a photo ID requirement and eliminated same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting and preregistration of high school students. North Carolina legislators had requested data on voting patterns by race and, with that data in hand, drafted a law that would "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision," according to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
* Gerrymandering so severe that Republicans control 10 of North Carolina's 13 US House seats despite the fact the state splits its vote nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats in Presidential elections.
* Packing the courts. From Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "The GOP attack on the courts began in 2013, when the legislature ended public financing for judicial elections, which had helped elect more minority and women judges. These efforts accelerated after liberal judges gained a 4-3 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2016. The legislature promptly changed the judicial election system by requiring candidates to represent a political party, the first time a state has moved from nonpartisan to partisan judicial elections since 1921. Republicans reasoned that having to identify as a Democrat would make it harder for liberal judges to win in a GOP-leaning state. The legislature then canceled judicial primaries, giving incumbents (who were mostly Republicans) an advantage due to their name recognition in races where voters were asked to choose among many candidates." Paul Blest of vice.com also notes: "The legislature has passed a number of laws in recent years aimed at limiting the power of the courts, including one (over Cooper’s veto) that phased out three seats on the Court of Appeals, preventing Cooper from making any new appointments in the case of a retirement."
Some good news, over the past two years the courts have not looked kindly on the Republican power grab. The 2013 voter ID law was thrown out by federal courts, and a federal panel has also thrown out the state's congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander (although the US Supreme Court has put this ruling on hold). A North Carolina court blocked much of the law limiting the Governor's powers of appointment, and another state court blocked the changes to elections boards.
So how are North Carolina Republicans reacting to these judicial rulings? By trying to get rid of the judges responsible, of course. From the Ari Berman article linked above, "Now the legislature has embarked on an unprecedented plan to transform the state’s courts by gerrymandering judicial maps to elect more Republican judges, preventing (Governor) Cooper from making key judicial appointments, and seeking to get rid of judicial elections altogether."
Next time we'll look at Michigan, where Republicans have come up with some novel ways to disenfranchise folks that we haven't discussed yet.
From a Time magazine article by Wendy Weiser and Daniel Weiner called, Democracy in North Carolina Could Disappear. Is Your State Next?:
In 2016, "the incumbent Republican Governor lost his reelection bid to Democrat Roy Cooper. Then things turned ugly. Seventeen days before Cooper was to take office, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a package of sweeping changes designed to limit his authority, which the outgoing Republican governor signed into law. The centerpiece of this effort was a plan to ensure continued Republican dominance of powerful state and county boards of elections, which are responsible for running elections in the state and have been controlled by appointees from the Governor’s party for more than a century. (The original law was struck down by a state court in March but then reenacted over Cooper’s veto with only minor changes.)
The new law extends the tenure — indefinitely, for all intents and purposes — of the sitting Republican-appointed Executive Director of the State Board of Elections, North Carolina’s leading election official. She would otherwise have been supplanted by a new Democratic appointee. The law also awards half the seats on state and local election boards to Republicans, which allows them to block any changes to voting rules adopted by the previous Republican-controlled bodies. The law even says Republicans get to chair all election boards during every crucial election year when the President, Governor and all statewide officials are on the ballot.
These changes leave little doubt as to who would really be in charge of North Carolina’s election process — and that is the point. Some legislative leaders openly admitted that one of their main goals of the election board law was to keep Republicans in power."
So in other words, because a Democrat managed to get elected Governor, the Republican sate legislature changed the laws to keep other Republicans in power, and they weren't shy about it. Nor have Republicans limited recent changes to the powers delegated to the Governor to elections boards. They also passed a law that requires that all cabinet appointments be approved by the legislature and that limits the number of state employees the governor can hire and fire to 425. The old limit was 1,500 and was increased from 400 around the time Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office. Yes, the Republican legislature will cheerfully increase the Governor's powers when a Republican takes over from a Democrat, they reduce them again when another Democrat wins the office.
What else have North Carolina Republicans been up to? How about:
* A 2013 law that made cuts to early voting, created a photo ID requirement and eliminated same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting and preregistration of high school students. North Carolina legislators had requested data on voting patterns by race and, with that data in hand, drafted a law that would "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision," according to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
* Gerrymandering so severe that Republicans control 10 of North Carolina's 13 US House seats despite the fact the state splits its vote nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats in Presidential elections.
* Packing the courts. From Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "The GOP attack on the courts began in 2013, when the legislature ended public financing for judicial elections, which had helped elect more minority and women judges. These efforts accelerated after liberal judges gained a 4-3 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2016. The legislature promptly changed the judicial election system by requiring candidates to represent a political party, the first time a state has moved from nonpartisan to partisan judicial elections since 1921. Republicans reasoned that having to identify as a Democrat would make it harder for liberal judges to win in a GOP-leaning state. The legislature then canceled judicial primaries, giving incumbents (who were mostly Republicans) an advantage due to their name recognition in races where voters were asked to choose among many candidates." Paul Blest of vice.com also notes: "The legislature has passed a number of laws in recent years aimed at limiting the power of the courts, including one (over Cooper’s veto) that phased out three seats on the Court of Appeals, preventing Cooper from making any new appointments in the case of a retirement."
Some good news, over the past two years the courts have not looked kindly on the Republican power grab. The 2013 voter ID law was thrown out by federal courts, and a federal panel has also thrown out the state's congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander (although the US Supreme Court has put this ruling on hold). A North Carolina court blocked much of the law limiting the Governor's powers of appointment, and another state court blocked the changes to elections boards.
So how are North Carolina Republicans reacting to these judicial rulings? By trying to get rid of the judges responsible, of course. From the Ari Berman article linked above, "Now the legislature has embarked on an unprecedented plan to transform the state’s courts by gerrymandering judicial maps to elect more Republican judges, preventing (Governor) Cooper from making key judicial appointments, and seeking to get rid of judicial elections altogether."
Next time we'll look at Michigan, where Republicans have come up with some novel ways to disenfranchise folks that we haven't discussed yet.
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