Tuesday's Results Expose The Anti-Democratic Effects Of Gerrymandering
The New York Times has a story describing the hurdles that gerrymandering and voter suppression will present to Democrats in the 2018 election. In fact, it is the consensus of most objective observers that it would talk a wave-like election in order for Democrats to regain the House. And, based on the map they have to defend in 2018, even a wave election may still keep the Senate in Republican hands. As one expert noted, “If Democrats win 52, 53, 54 percent of the national House vote, we’re likely to see Republicans hold onto control”.
In the Virginia elections last Tuesday, it is estimated that Democrats received 224,000 more votes than Republicans for the House of Delegates, matching the 9% gap in the gubernatorial race. Yet it appears that Republicans will still maintain control of the House of Delegates by a 51-49 margin. In Wisconsin, a 2012 election resulted in the Republicans controlling 60% of the seats in the Wisconsin Assembly yet only received 47% of the votes. In Texas, it is estimated that over 600,000 of the 13.5 million registered voters, do not have the proper ID to actually allow them to vote. That is 4.5% of the eligible voters who are essentially ineligible. It is no surprise that black and Hispanic voters are impacted by this voter ID restriction at far higher rates than whites.
The Times makes another point that Republicans trot out regularly, namely, “Liberal voters and racial minorities tend to be clustered in major cities and their suburbs, concentrating the Democratic base in a smaller number of congressional districts, even when the districts are drawn in an evenhanded way.” As Matt Yglesias points out, these districts can hardly be drawn in an evenhanded way if one party is systematically disadvantaged.
This kind of extreme gerrymandering just exacerbates the extremism in our politics today, at this time primarily from Republicans because there are so many safe seats that the only real competition is from even further right in a GOP primary battle. And the only way to arrest the effects of these extreme gerrymanders is to have the fortune to win a wave election in a census year or the election after. Which means that you can go for years with a minority embedded as a majority. This may have been somewhat acceptable back in the days where there was at least the appearance of a center, where both parties (rightly or wrongly) agreed on certain guiding principles like fighting communism. But in today’s partisan climate, when the goals of the parties are at such variance, it is no way to run a country. History has taught us that when the majority continually wins elections by thousands if not millions of votes and is still continually locked out of power, a distinctly and equally anti-democratic backlash is usually the result. Unless the Supreme Court finally steps in, that seems to be where we are heading.
