Supreme Court Forces Minority Texas Voters To Remain Disenfranchised
Republicans increasingly rely on voter suppression to win elections and then gerrymander districts even more radically in order to ensure they maintain their governing majority. The best example of this is the state of Wisconsin. It is estimated that some 300,000 potential voters were disenfranchised by the state’s new voter ID law in the last election. Since Trump’s margin in that state was a mere 22,000 votes, it’s pretty clear that voter suppression was a decisive factor. In 2012, Democrats won 53% of the vote in the state, but ended up with just 40% of the seats in the Wisconsin Assembly because of extreme gerrymandering.
This disenfranchisement through extreme partisan gerrymandering eventually spawned a voting rights case, Gill v. Whitford, that will finally get heard by the Supreme Court. But I would not be too hopeful of the outcome in that case. Already, the Supreme Court allowed the existing districts, which had been ruled unconstitutional and required redrawing for the 2018 election by a lower federal court, to remain in place, thereby ensuring that yet another election goes by where thousands of voters will be illegally disenfranchised.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court made a similar ruling regarding illegal racially gerrymandered districts in Texas. Again, the lower court ruled that these districts would have to be redrawn for 2018 election and again the Supreme Court stepped in and let these illegal districts stand not only for 2018 but, according to Rick Hasen, the 2020 election as well, which is critical in terms of redistricting after the 2020 census. Although the case is a little complex, the districts were originally ruled illegal all the way back in 2011. Yet voters have been offered no relief in every election since, due to Republican obstruction and the slow wheels of “justice”.
Incredibly, these rulings mean that voters in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas will have been forced to vote in districts that courts have ruled were illegally gerrymandered, effectively disenfranchised, for the large majority of elections this decade. In all three states, it was the post-2010 redistricting that created these illegal gerrymanders. Yet the Supreme Court seems oblivious to this threat to a real democracy, preferring to leave the election process to the states in true Jim Crow fashion.
Needless to say, this Texas decision was another typical 5-4 decision, with Merrick Garland’s stolen seat being a decisive vote. I think we all have a clue as to how Garland would have voted had he been on the Court, as he should be. When you see these kinds of rulings and results, it is easy to understand why faith in democracy has collapsed in recent years. How long can a democracy survive when the majority is locked out of power by the minority?
