Partisan Gerrymandering Undermines Democracy
US Constitution Guarantees Every State "a Republican Form of Government"
Partisan gerrymandering of US congressional delegations and state legislatures has created a political crisis in America, undermining the nation’s commitment to democratic governance. Democracy can only survive in an environment of trust and respect among all citizens. When political leaders feel free to deny those who disagree with them the right to meaningfully participate in the legitimate processes of government, they are rejecting democracy. They are also violating Section 4, Article IV of the US Constitution:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
Long part of American political history, the concept of “gerrymandering” was born in Massachusetts in 1812 when the state’s governor Elbridge Gerry accepted a redistricting plan favoring his own political party excessively. The plan had been drawn up by the state’s legislature under the control of Gerry’s political party and designed to severely limit opposing representation in that assembly. It included a voting district that resembled the salamander, an amphibian with a lizard-like shape. Ever since, Gerry’s name has been combined with the salamander to describe blatant restrictions on legitimate political representation.
Although nothing new with regards to intent, gerrymandering has in recent years become far more undemocratic as computers and the Internet have provided legislators access to more sophisticated data on which to base their manipulation of representation. Today, politicians are able to pick their voters rather than the other way around, as it should be in a democratic society.
Twenty-six states today are guilty of imposing representative systems that skew towards one party or the other. Generally, this has reinforced the advantages of incumbency, but it also has enhanced the dangers of “primarying.” Voter turnout in primaries is normally 20-30 percent of the general election vote. This allows an opponent capable of rallying a sizeable block of voters on the basis of a single issue to successfully challenge an incumbent in a primary.
It is not just that members of the minority party in a gerrymandered state have no realistic opportunity to propose legislation or other rules and regulations, but under such circumstances the majority party likely will suffer from the lack of the constructive criticism that a responsible opposition can provide. Those of us who grew up in the Solid South under Democratic control and who now live in the equally Solid South under Republican sway understand how shortsighted and stagnant one-party domination can be.
Gerrymandering also results in politics that focus more on winning elections than on governing in the common interest. This is true at all levels of the political system. Obsessive emphasis on partisan control has led to demands for partisan elections even for school boards and libraries, institutions that are seldom engaged in activities that might be labeled as “political.”
The obsessive emphasis on winning elections rather than on solving problems is also apparent in the current Congressional stalemate. Political posturing for electoral purposes is threatening both the national security and the country’s economic viability.
What does the future look like? It is not encouraging.
In the 1960s the US Supreme Court handed down several decisions regarding representation that gave real meaning to the “equal protection” clause in the 14th Amendment. Under Baker v. Carr in 1962, the court required Tennessee to redraw voting districts that had not been updated in 60 years. A Georgia case in 1963, Gray v. Sanders, required states to apply a “one person, one vote” standard in statewide elections.
Two decisions were issued in 1964. In Reynolds v. Sims, states were directed to make all state legislative districts roughly equal in population; and in Westberry v. Sanders, states were ordered to regularly adjust their congressional districts so that each represents roughly the same size population.
For nearly 50 years the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act discouraged state legislators from pursuing questionable redistricting schemes, but the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts scuttled Section 2 of the VRA in 2013 which gave the Department of Justice approval authority over voting right changes in effected jurisdictions. Roberts, author of the majority decision in Shelby v. Holder, argued that statistics supporting DOJ’s authority were outdated.
In 2019, Roberts delivered another blow to “equal protection” for voters in Rucho v. Common Cause, claiming that when it came to partisan gerrymandering, the court had “no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.” The other four GOP appointees to the court agreed with Roberts, but Associate Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s four liberals, declared, “The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important that free and fair elections.”
Unless there is a change of heart on the part of the majority on the Roberts Court, there are few prospects in the near term for any relief from the gerrymandering juggernaut that is crushing the life out of America’s democracy. There are several redistricting challenges before the court presently that involve obvious partisan gerrymandering, but this may be just another area in which the Roberts Court appears to be intent on returning state authority to pre-Civil War status.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1173469584/partisan-gerrymandering-explainer-north-carolina
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/07/biggest-problem-with-gerrymandering/
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/gerrymandering-fair-representation