President Trump and his Republican enablers are not shy about their goal of dismantling public institutions as we have long understood them. Consider Trump's communication style. Many folks would consider it inappropriate for the President to begin each day by firing off personal insults against people who disagree with him, including people he appointed to government positions. But according to Trump he's just being, "modern day Presidential." And many folks probably thought that in the 21st century, we would have Presidents that respect the tradition of America as the great melting pot, whereas instead we have an administration that will cheerfully remind you that it is openly white-supremacist and religiously bigoted.
Another way in which we live in a world turned upside down: This week, a man appeared at a job interview and told a number of falsehoods while at times yelling, crying, talking about his love of alcohol, suggesting he is targeted by conspiracy and threatening those who have doubted him. That man was Brett Kavanaugh, appearing before the US Senate he hopes will appoint him to the Supreme Court, and responding to allegations of sexual misconduct. From Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker, "The line between judicial independence and partisan politics is thin, often illusory—a pretense, really, but rigorously preserved. This afternoon, that line disappeared entirely. Kavanaugh, "claimed the Democrats were seeking "revenge for the Clintons" and invoked the Bible: "You sowed the wind, now I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind."" Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went further, issuing the threat, "Let me tell you, my Democratic friends. If this is the new norm, you better watch out for your nominees."
To digress for a moment, we need to ask: what is this dangerous precedent that Democrats are setting by suggesting that credible allegations of sexual misconduct be investigated before a man is appointed to an incredibly important lifetime position? From Anna North of Vox.com:
"The message of Kavanaugh’s threats was clear: If he wasn’t safe, then no one was. That message comes from a place of deep privilege. While women have never been safe when coming forward to report sexual misconduct, men like Kavanaugh — white, educated in the country’s most prestigious schools, groomed through high-profile jobs — have long been able to glide smoothly to the highest levels of our government and other arenas of power. That may still be true; the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation on Friday. But increasingly, these men are not safe from the testimony of women who come forward to share their stories."
Returning to the subject at hand: So then, gone are the days when candidates for federal and state Courts were not openly partisan. And gone are the days when the President might appoint a judge to the Supreme Court without being completely sure of his partisan leanings. Trump's candidates for the federal Courts are vetted and handpicked by the ultra-right-wing Federalist Society. These developments, as evidence by the Kavanaugh nomination, trouble legal scholars. From Matt Kwnong of CBC News:
"Sheldon Goldman was floored by what he heard. The Supreme Court
expert with the University of Massachusetts Amherst saw Kavanaugh's
aggressive style as a direct appeal to the party of Trump. "The
support of the president, that's the name of the game," Goldman said.
"It's short-term consideration to keep the support of the Republicans or
the president, at the expense of public perception of him and of the
court." Except that public perception is vital for the sanctity of a neutral Supreme Court, he said. "It
matters to the extent that people will want to accept the court's
ruling as legitimate," Goldman said. "And if the court is considered
simply another political body, people are going to ask: Why should we
insulate these lifetime appointments from politics when they're so
heavily involved in politics?"
But once judges are appointed to lifetime positions, at least they can, and hopefully will, adjudicate the law in a non-partisan manner, right? Not if Republicans have their way.
Republicans don't care about that old school textbook stuff, the separation of powers in government. Recently, they've discovered that, with legislative majorities locked in by gerrymandering, they can dismantle and remake the Courts at will, and turn them into a system of rubber-stamps for whatever Republicans want. Why didn't anyone think of this before?
In August, the Repubican-dominated state legislature in West Virginia came up with a most novel approach to removing the current judges on a state Supreme Court so that the Republican Governor can appoint new judges: impeach the entire Court. From Doug Criss of CNN:
"The West Virginia House of Delegates' impeachment of the justices on the state's Supreme Court of Appeals is an unprecedented move spurred by an escalating scandal in the state's judicial system. But West Virginia Democrats charge it's just a ploy by Republicans to put more conservative judges on the bench in the state's highest court.
The court's justices -- Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justices Allen Loughry, Robin Davis and Elizabeth Walker -- are accused of failing to carry out the court's administrative duties and wasteful spending during office renovations."
But let's not be too cynical - perhaps the charges in question are legitimate? Well, the impeachment trial is going on this week, and currently the Justices on trial are being quizzed on "wasteful spending" such are ordering pizza rather than eating in the Capitol cafeteria. High crimes and misdemeanors? So far I'm not seeing them here.
Pennsylvania Republicans have also threatened to impeach their state Supreme Court. Ironically, the threatened impeachment is over another brazen Republican power grab, that's state heavily-gerrymandered map designed to maximize the number of Republicans elected to the US House. The state Supreme Court threw out that map and gave lawmakers a chance to draw fairer lines, but the legislature failed to do so. The call for impeachment never gained traction, so this past June, (from the Associated Press) "Republicans brought forward another plan that could limit the lifespan of the court's Democratic majority: changing the state's constitution to elect appellate court judges in districts, rather than in statewide elections." "The bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday (June 17), blindsiding Democrats who called it a scheme to gerrymander the courts."
Finally, if you've read earlier articles in this series, you won't be surprised to learn that North Carolina Republicans are trying to remake the Courts in that state. It seems no public institution is safe in the state where the Republican legislature (heavily protected by gerrymandering itself) tries to tweak the law on practically a daily basis to thwart democracy and maximize its advantage.
From an August 28 article by Mark Joseph Stern on Slate.com:
"The tumult over North Carolina’s upcoming state Supreme Court election began in 2017, when the GOP-controlled state legislature abolished judicial primaries. Republican Justice Barbara Jackson is running for reelection in November, and GOP legislators hoped to shield her from competition. At the same time, they assumed multiple Democrats would run against each other in the general election, splitting the progressive vote and giving Jackson a smooth path to victory.
"That didn’t happen. Instead, Democrats coalesced around a single candidate, civil rights lawyer Anita Earls. Jackson, on the other hand, drew a Republican challenger: Chris Anglin."
"So Republicans changed the rules. During a hastily called special session, GOP legislators passed a law to strip Anglin of his party affiliation on the ballot. Anglin sued, and a state court blocked the law as a violation of his due process and associational rights under the North Carolina constitution. Speaker of the House of Representatives Tim Moore and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Phil Berger appealed, but an appellate court unanimously declined to reverse the ruling. Rather than appeal to the state Supreme Court—where Democrats currently hold a 4–3 majority—Moore and Berger gave up."
---
Next time I'll be writing about the disaster that is Republican Scott Walker's administration in Wisconsin. Hopefully, I'll be writing about his defeat by Democrat Tony Evers. Keep your fingers crossed.
Showing posts with label gerrymandering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gerrymandering. Show all posts
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Sunday, July 29, 2018
The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Ten: Republican Autocracy in Michigan and the Poisoned People of Flint
"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"?
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"?
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.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Five: Gerrymandering and Race
Gerrymandering
is such a big topic, I couldn't cover it all in my
previous post on the subject. Let's take a look at another way
Republicans have long manipulated the system of creating legislative
districts: racial gerrymandering. Even before technology allowed
those in control to precisely draw districts to their advantage on
practically a house-to-house basis based on demographics, Republicans
effectively gerrymandered congressional districts through the
creation of majority-minority districts.
Here's how it works. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the once-common practice of spreading minorities across voting districts, leaving them too few in number in any given district to elect their preferred candidates. The practice was known as "racial gerrymandering." Wow, conservatives must hate being required to create districts where minority voters are the majority, right? Wrong! They love it! Why? Because creating majority-minority districts allows them to racially gerrymander more effectively than ever.
There's a reason why Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina each send exactly one Democrat (and one person of color) to the US House despite the fact that those states have a lot of minority voters. It's because most of those minority voters are carefully packed into a single congressional district.
Grant Hayden, a Professor of Law at Hofstra University has written a good summary the problem:
"[M]ajority-minority districts give rise to a dynamic that undercuts the very goal they are designed to achieve. While they improve the ability of minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice in a particular district, they also cost their preferred political party other valuable seats in the legislature."
"Majority-minority districts have at least one very curious effect: they help Republicans. This is curious because minority voters, especially blacks, vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers. But upon closer study, this by-product of majority-minority districts merely fulfills a longstanding theoretical prediction."
"The theory goes like this. When creating a majority-minority political district, the additional minority voters must come from somewhere. That somewhere is adjoining districts, which are drained of their minority voters. Those voters, though, are not merely minority voters-they are also reliably Democratic voters. And this makes it more likely that the Republican candidates will prevail in those adjoining districts."
Would this actually happen in practice? It's well-documented that it already has. After the 1990 census, scores of majority-minority districts were created in order to comply with the mandates of the Voting Rights Act. For example, thirteen additional majority-black Congressional districts were created. They, in turn, produced thirteen additional black representatives. Majority-minority districting did, indeed, lead to the election of the candidates of the minorities' choosing."
"Unfortunately, a large number of studies of the 1992 and 1994 Congressional elections revealed that this additional representation came at a cost. As a result of majority-minority districting, Democrats lost at least ten seats to Republicans. When minority voters were drained out of adjoining districts, Republican majorities were the result."
"Both parties apparently notice that majority-minority districts tend to help Republicans overall, and hurt Democrats overall. In the early 1990s, the Republican National Committee pushed for the creation of more black and Hispanic districts as part of a strategy to win additional seats in the House."
This January, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on racial gerrymandering of the kind described above orchestrated by Texas Republicans. This is in addition to the two cases the Court had already agreed to hear on gerrymandering, the first from Wisconsin regarding the extreme Republican gerrymander in that state, the second regarding the gerrymander of a single congressional seat in Maryland by Democrats.
As noted by Pema Levy of Mother Jones:
"This summer, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that Texas Republicans intentionally weakened the voting power of African American and Latino voters when it drew multiple state House and congressional districts. This was the ninth racial discrimination in voting case the state has lost since 2011, which includes a long legal battle over its stringent voter ID requirement. Now, the Supreme Court will determine whether Texas’ maps can stand."
Whether Texas intentionally weakened the voting power of minorities through gerrymander in that state is not really a question, given that Texas Governor Greg Abbot has said, "[i]n 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats."
The real question is, how long and to what degree with the Court (and Americans at large) will continue to let Republicans get away with this garbage.
Here's how it works. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the once-common practice of spreading minorities across voting districts, leaving them too few in number in any given district to elect their preferred candidates. The practice was known as "racial gerrymandering." Wow, conservatives must hate being required to create districts where minority voters are the majority, right? Wrong! They love it! Why? Because creating majority-minority districts allows them to racially gerrymander more effectively than ever.
There's a reason why Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina each send exactly one Democrat (and one person of color) to the US House despite the fact that those states have a lot of minority voters. It's because most of those minority voters are carefully packed into a single congressional district.
Grant Hayden, a Professor of Law at Hofstra University has written a good summary the problem:
"[M]ajority-minority districts give rise to a dynamic that undercuts the very goal they are designed to achieve. While they improve the ability of minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice in a particular district, they also cost their preferred political party other valuable seats in the legislature."
"Majority-minority districts have at least one very curious effect: they help Republicans. This is curious because minority voters, especially blacks, vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers. But upon closer study, this by-product of majority-minority districts merely fulfills a longstanding theoretical prediction."
"The theory goes like this. When creating a majority-minority political district, the additional minority voters must come from somewhere. That somewhere is adjoining districts, which are drained of their minority voters. Those voters, though, are not merely minority voters-they are also reliably Democratic voters. And this makes it more likely that the Republican candidates will prevail in those adjoining districts."
Would this actually happen in practice? It's well-documented that it already has. After the 1990 census, scores of majority-minority districts were created in order to comply with the mandates of the Voting Rights Act. For example, thirteen additional majority-black Congressional districts were created. They, in turn, produced thirteen additional black representatives. Majority-minority districting did, indeed, lead to the election of the candidates of the minorities' choosing."
"Unfortunately, a large number of studies of the 1992 and 1994 Congressional elections revealed that this additional representation came at a cost. As a result of majority-minority districting, Democrats lost at least ten seats to Republicans. When minority voters were drained out of adjoining districts, Republican majorities were the result."
This January, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on racial gerrymandering of the kind described above orchestrated by Texas Republicans. This is in addition to the two cases the Court had already agreed to hear on gerrymandering, the first from Wisconsin regarding the extreme Republican gerrymander in that state, the second regarding the gerrymander of a single congressional seat in Maryland by Democrats.
As noted by Pema Levy of Mother Jones:
"This summer, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that Texas Republicans intentionally weakened the voting power of African American and Latino voters when it drew multiple state House and congressional districts. This was the ninth racial discrimination in voting case the state has lost since 2011, which includes a long legal battle over its stringent voter ID requirement. Now, the Supreme Court will determine whether Texas’ maps can stand."
Whether Texas intentionally weakened the voting power of minorities through gerrymander in that state is not really a question, given that Texas Governor Greg Abbot has said, "[i]n 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats."
The real question is, how long and to what degree with the Court (and Americans at large) will continue to let Republicans get away with this garbage.
Sunday, April 22, 2018
The Eclipse of American Democracy, Part Four: Gerrymandering and Modern Technology
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.
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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