Partisan Gerrymandering threatens democracy

This post originally was published in the Wilson Times July 6, 2019.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week that the court has no jurisdiction over partisan gerrymandering constitutes a baffling abandonment of basic democratic principles. The court sent the matter back to the state legislatures, which have been busily making it more difficult for candidates in one party to get elected while the other party, the one drawing the electoral district lines, gets to yawn through elections confident that they have the votes. After all, the latter party got to choose who would vote in the election.

Gerrymandering, having been done by both parties in various states, is a rejection of the Supreme Court’s 1964 “one person, one vote” ruling, which held that one group of voters could not have greater impact than other groups. Congressional districts had to be of roughly equal population so that each voter’s ballot would have the same impact in the House of Representatives. The ruling also applied to state legislative districts. A state could not give each county one seat in the State Senate (as some in North Carolina wanted) because the counties’ populations are not equal.

Like those forbidden voting populations, partisan gerrymandering denies voters equal impact in an election. Although running for office in same-population districts, candidates of the party drawing the lines have far better chances of winning the election. Thus, voters supporting the other political party cast votes that have little chance of winning. In North Carolina, a state with a nearly even partisan division among voters, shrewd gerrymandering has given Republicans a 10-3 advantage in congressional seats.

The court’s decision to let partisan politicians have their way takes America a step toward one-party rule and leaves voters with the possibility that future election ballots may not have any choices. Elections become superfluous, and fair representation is denied. The party in power will stay in power because it gets to choose who votes.

In North Carolina, the Democratic Party and Common Cause have filed suit over the GOP’s highly partisan redistricting plans. If the high court continues to stand behind this new precedent, Democrats will have few options:

1.    They could all abandon the Democratic Party and re-register as Republicans, then carry out a subversive effort to replace that party’s leadership with people more committed to democracy and less dedicated to raw political power.

       2.    They can propose a federal law that clearly defines partisan gerrymanders and makes them illegal. Because many states’ congressional districts are already gerrymandered and Republicans hold a solid majority in the U.S. Senate, it may be impossible to find the votes to get such legislation through Congress.

          3. The plaintiffs can go back to the federal courts and try to persuade the increasingly partisan Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. Chief Justice Roberts says the courts have no jurisdiction over the drawing of electoral districts. Surely the chief justice is familiar with the concept of “checks and balances.” If the courts are not going to be allowed to limit the worst instincts of state legislatures, there are no checks and balances, and there is no representative democracy. The court has been less reluctant to take on matters that, like partisan gerrymandering, are not mentioned in the Constitution, such as same-sex marriage, abortion, and public education.

This ruling will go down in history as an abandonment of liberty. When there are no fairly elected representatives, there is no democracy.