Among the many frustrating things about politics today is the pure, unapologetic hypocrisy on display among an alarming number of our nation’s leaders.
Too often people use legitimate philosophical arguments in defense of policies that really are intended to give them a political advantage. When circumstances change, they feel perfectly comfortable making an opposite philosophical argument with little effort to explain the change in view. We’ve seen it time and time again with Republicans and Democrats alike changing their tune on a host of procedural issues depending on which party holds a legislative majority.
A particularly unfortunate example involves the practice of gerrymandering — drawing legislative district lines for political advantage. Each party tends to decry the practice in states where they don’t have power and to defend it in places where they do. The truth is that it should be decried everywhere it takes place. Gerrymandering often leads to terribly contorted maps that give lawmakers unwieldy districts and leaves cities and counties without true representation. A common trick is to break up communities dominated by the opposing party, attaching those voters to districts where their votes are far less likely to make a difference. The result is many voters feeling disenfranchised and cynical.
What’s even worse is that when districts aren’t truly competitive, representatives are encouraged to cater to the extremes in their parties rather than tack toward the middle. The fear is facing a candidate to their left or right during a primary, not losing in the general election. The result is an even wider partisan divide.
This is a growing problem. A New York Times analysis of the latest round of redistricting indicates the number of competitive congressional districts around the country is dwindling fast. The newspaper reported that with two-thirds of the new boundaries set, map makers are on pace to draw fewer than 40 seats — out of 435 — that are considered competitive based on the 2020 presidential election results. Ten years ago that number was 73, the Times reported. These are devastating numbers.
“The parties are contributing to more and more single-party districts and taking the voters out of the equation,” former U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., told the Times. “November becomes a constitutional formality.”
In the 29 states where maps have been completed and not thrown out by courts, there are just 22 districts that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump won by 5 percentage points or less, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The Times reports that by this point in the 2012 redistricting cycle, there were 44 districts defined as competitive. In 1992, the margin between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush was within 5 points in 108 congressional districts.
In New York, the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a map that gives the party a strong chance of flipping as many as three Republican-held House seats. In 2020, there were four districts where Biden and Trump were within 5 percentage points. There are none in the new map.
Meanwhile in Texas, Republican-led redistricting has made the state go from having 12 competitive congressional seats to just one. Trump won 52% of the vote in Texas in 2020, but Republicans are expected to win roughly 65% of the congressional seats.
The impact of this trend is clear. Former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., told the Times that he knows Republicans who would like to vote for Democratic priorities like gun control but fear a backlash from the GOP base. And he said House Democrats would like to address issues such as Social Security and Medicare reform but know doing so would draw a primary challenge from the left.
A common rationale for gerrymandering is that if one party is doing it in areas it controls, the other party has to press its advantage as much as possible where it has the opportunity. It’s clear where that thinking is taking us.
What we need is a system of drawing districts that puts the needs of the voters first, not the political parties. It’s time for people to demand it.
Source: Berkshire mont
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