To begin, a lesson from history. In 1948 the Union of South Africa held a national election in which the conservative Reunited National Party won a majority of seats in Parliament despite losing the popular vote to the more liberal United Party. South Africa at that time had a constitution that located many parliamentary seats in thinly-populated rural areas that favored conservatives at the disadvantage to more heavily populated (and more liberal) urban areas; thus the conservative victory despite losing the popular vote 37.7% to 49.2%. In power for the first time, the openly white-supremacist RNP proceeded to institute the apartheid system that completely disenfranchised non-whites and otherwise put the country on a path to becoming a dictatorship that allowed no civil liberties at all.
The parallels between 1940s South Africa and the United States in the 21st century are striking. In parts one and three of this series, I discussed how the bigotry of today's Republican party is damaging to democracy in our multi-cultural society. In this and future posts, I'll cover how Republicans are using and abusing the law to make sure they stay in power in spite of, and not because of, the fact that the United States is a representative democracy.
Gerrymandering, the practice of establishing a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries, has been around for centuries. But leave it to 21st-century Republicans to take it to extremes; everywhere they can use gerrymandering to maximize their advantage, they do so. Modern technology makes it possible to do this with great precision. Consider the case of the gerrymandering of the Wisconsin state legislature, now the subject of a case before the US Supreme Court.
From a 2017 article by Jordan Ellenberg of the New York Times:
"About as many Democrats live in Wisconsin as Republicans do. But you wouldn’t know it from the Wisconsin State Assembly, where Republicans hold 65 percent of the seats, a bigger majority than Republican legislators enjoy in conservative states like Texas and Kentucky."
"The United States Supreme Court is trying to understand how that happened. On Tuesday, the justices heard oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford, reviewing a three-judge panel’s determination that Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn district map is so flagrantly gerrymandered that it denies Wisconsinites their full right to vote. A long list of elected officials, representing both parties, have filed briefs asking the justices to uphold the panel’s ruling."
"Gerrymandering used to be an art, but advanced computation has made it a science. Wisconsin’s Republican legislators, after their victory in the census year of 2010, tried out map after map, tweak after tweak. They ran each potential map through computer algorithms that tested its performance in a wide range of political climates. The map they adopted is precisely engineered to assure Republican control in all but the most extreme circumstances."
The model for today's Republican gerrymandering strategy was established by Texas in 2002, and was quickly copied by other Republican-controlled states. I wrote about this in a 2013 post; here are some highlights:
"The redistricting of Congressional seats is traditionally done once every ten years, soon after the national census. In the 2000 election, Texas elected 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans to the US House, and did so again two years later after the decennial redistricting. However, in the 2002 election the Republicans also gained control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since the 19th century. The newly elected Republican legislature then engaged in an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting plan. After a protracted partisan struggle, the legislature enacted a new congressional districting map, as a result of which Republicans won 21 seats to the Democrats' 11 in the 2004 election. The plan was personally shepherded through the Texas legislature by US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Texas Senator John Cornyn was quick to congratulate DeLay and to brag about the success of the redistricting plan, saying, "Everybody who knows Tom knows that he's a fighter and a competitor, and he saw an opportunity to help the Republicans stay in power in Washington.""
Republicans won very big in the 2010 mid-term elections, gaining control of legislatures and Governor's offices in many states in the south and the rust-belt. The result of course was the re-drawing of both Congressional districts and state legislative districts to maximum advantage. The Republican party's State Leadership Committee is quite proud of the way in which they manipulated the results of the 2012 U.S. House election, and has written an analysis for me. Boasting about the success of their "REDMAP" plan, the Committee reported:
"After REDMAP’s success on Election Day 2010, Republicans held majorities in 10 of the 15 states that gained or lost U.S. House seats and where the legislature played a role in redrawing the state legislative and congressional district map. In the 70 congressional districts that were labeled by National Public Radio as "competitive" in 2010, Republicans controlled the redrawing of at least 47 of those districts; Democrats were responsible for 15, and a non-partisan process determined eight."
"REDMAP’s effect on the 2012 election is plain when analyzing the results: Pennsylvanians cast 83,000 more votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates than their Republican opponents, but elected a 13-5 Republican majority to represent them in Washington; Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress. Nationwide, Republicans won 54 percent of the U.S. House seats, along with 58 of 99 state legislative chambers, while winning only 8 of 33 U.S. Senate races and carrying only 47.8 percent of the national presidential vote."
The Report also brags that gerrymandering also helped Republicans win in 2012 at the state level: "In Ohio, for instance, Republicans actually expanded their state House and state Senate majorities in 2012, to 60-39 in the House and 23-10 in the Senate, even as Obama carried the state by three points." "Another good example is the Virginia House. Republicans retained a 67-31 edge there, despite Obama having carried the state by four points."
But hey, don't Democrats also gerrymander when they get the chance? Actually they do so quite rarely. True, the Supreme Court has taken up the case of Benisek v. Lamone, in which the plaintiffs claim that Maryland Democrats deliberately redrew the state's 6th Congressional district with partisan intent. (Maryland Democrats have admitted that they did draw the district with partisan intent, the question before the Court is whether they did so illegally).
The frustrating thing here is false equivalence. The Hill notes that, "Legal analysts say the court likely took the Maryland case in addition to the Wisconsin case to settle the issue in a neutral way without siding with one political party over another". So on the one hand, Republicans have gerrymandered virtually all congressional seats and state legislative seats across all of the south, most of the plains states and much of the rust-belt, while Democrats are accused of gerrymandering a single congressional seat in Maryland. So of course we get headlines such as (from the Washington Post), "Maryland’s redistricting case reminds us: Both parties gerrymander. A lot."
Note finally that drawing districts through computer modeling of voter demographics is only one way that Republicans cheat to win through gerrymandering. Next time I'll cover how Republicans manipulate laws designed to protect minority voters so that the intent of those laws is turned upside down for most folks.
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