At this point, the only thing I really want to see is an end to the self-righteous sanctimony and an open admission that the gerrymander wars are what politics is always about, power, plain and simple.
Last week Virginia upended the midterms by narrowly passing a referendum to the state constitution that allows for a “temporary” redistricting in the interest of “fairness.” In this case, temporary means until at least 2032 when the results of the next census will be in and fairness means that rural voters who generally support Republican candidates will no longer have representation in Congress, as a roughly even state, currently six to five in favor of Democrats shifts to ten to one. None other than the nearly sainted former President Barack Obama congratulated voters for effectively disenfranchising their fellow citizens and changing their own constitution to do so. “Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.” In the progressive mind, Republicans started this fight by redistricting in Texas last year, which reduced Democrat seats by approximately five, and democracy now requires other states to do the same because no matter what, democracy always means whatever Democrats say at the moment. What President Obama and others don’t mention, however, is that if we are considering these redistricting fights a tit-for-tat game, California had already struck back. Similar to Virginia, Governor Gavin “Cobra Kai” Newsom changed the rules he was sworn to uphold last year, netting additional seats for Democrats. In fact, it was a Republican state, Indiana, that refused to follow through afterwards, which by the standards Democrats laid out, should have ended the matter rather than them choosing to escalate it further. Otherwise, states of both parties have variously proposed new maps and are at various points in the process including Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina. This is in addition to states like Illinois and Maine that already boast highly partisan maps. Thus, we may consider it a plague of what is maligned as gerrymandering sweeping the country, a plague that has resulted in some rather bizarre positions in my opinion.
For example, the economist Jessica Reidl claimed she hated gerrymandering, but had no choice except to support it because by supporting it, she might help stop it one day at some undermined point in the future by some undetermined means. “I hate gerrymandering, but the question is: If GOP states brazenly do it mid-decade, is the proper blue-state response ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ or ‘level the playing field to neutralize its national impacts.’ Ultimately, I voted ‘yes’ based on the latter. Paradoxically, I consider this the best way to ultimately discourage mid-decade gerrymanders because it prevents the instigators from being rewarded with much more net House seats. And I believe this cross-state backlash will discourage this mid-decade gambit from being repeated in the future.” For better or worse, Florida became infected on Monday in what amounts to a near immediate refutation of her approach. Governor Ron DeSantis announced that his state was pursuing a new map, likely to reduce the number of Democrat seats by four. Not surprisingly, the pro-democracy crowd that cheered on Virginia and California didn’t see this as either an attempt to restore democracy and fairness, or as another necessary round of tit-for-tat. Instead, many suddenly become experts on Florida’s state constitution, claiming the new map doesn’t pass muster while simultaneously believing the Virginia map does, even as there is a pending case before the state Supreme Court that could potentially overturn it and a federal circuit court has already stayed it. Incredibly, they argue that the Florida map violates the “Fair Districts Amendment” despite that they changed the Virginia constitution expressly to make their districts unfair and many including President Obama and Ms. Reidl either braggled about the outcome, congratulationing themselves for achieving unfairness, or tacitly supported the unfairness. Apparently, that was then, this is now, and all is no longer fair. Last week, House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was defiant after the Virginia vote, vowing that he and his party would pursue “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” while daring Governor DeSantis to respond. Even after the third highly visible assassination attempt on President Donald Trump on Saturday night, he declared that he didn’t “give a damn” that Republicans were concerned about some of his more explosive rhetoric. Yesterday, however, he transformed into the political equivalent of a whining teenager whose parents won’t given the keys to the brand new Porsche, tweeting that the new map in Florida was unfair and even racist. “The DeSantis Dummymander blatantly violates Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. It also violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by nakedly targeting communities of color. See you in Court.”
Personally, I might be one of the few politically engaged people in the entire country that doesn’t give the slightest shit about any of this. While I would prefer partisans on both sides refrain from using self serving, sanctimonious nonsense to rationalize what is nothing more than pure political power play, the generalized fear of gerrymandering and the belief that it can somehow be prevented fundamentally misunderstands the history of the tactic and the nature of political decisions. Historically speaking, gerrymandering has been around almost since the dawn of the Republic itself. The word was first used in 1812. Originally written as “gerry-mander” the term was featured in a political cartoon in the Boston Gazette mocking Governor Eldbridge Gerry for manipulating the boundaries of the state electoral districts for partisan advantage and creating a new map that included a district around Boston that somewhat resembled a salamander, or what some described as a winged dragon grabbing the region. Interestingly and illustratively for our purposes, Governor Gerry personally found the map “highly disagreeable,” but he signed it into law anyway at the behest of the leaders of what at the time was known as the Democrat-Republican Party, led by President James Madison. Back then, the party was ascendant after the collapse of the Federalists and they sought to protect their position. Though Governor Gerry lost the next election, the redistricting worked and the party maintained control of the state. While he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a two term member of the House of Representatives, and a Vice President under James Madison himself in addition to being governor, Gerry is now remembered as a pejorative slur. Crucially, however, he’s remembered at all because the process worked and has not stopped since, despite periodic wailing at the unfairness of it all accompanied by much gnashing of teeth when things do not go a certain way.
Though some have questioned how the Constitution could allow for such a thing in the first place, rarely is the question asked how it could be any other way or is the truth acknowledged the Constitution itself fixes the problem – to the extent there is a problem in the first place – over time. While it might be easy to say the Constitution “allows” gerrymandering, the situation is more complicated than it seems at first glance. The House of Representatives is based based on popular representation according to the relative population of the states rather than a fixed number like the Senate. Because the population of the fledgling states would necessarily change over time and even in those early days, the Founders were convinced the country as a whole would rapidly grow, they needed a means for the apportionment to adapt overtime, so they did three things. First, they created a formula for the apportionment beyond the initial one representative for 30,000 that would apply once the Constitution was initially ratified. “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” Next, they mandated that a census be conducted, what they referred to as an “actual Enumeration,” the first three years after the first meeting of Congress, then every ten years. Finally, as was frequently the case, they left it up to the states to decide how to reapportion them each cycle while giving Congress the power to intervene, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” While some may insist this created a patchwork system of thirteen different apportionment processes – now of course, 50 – doing so has the benefit of one state going off the rails not impacting the others.
Ultimately, the Founders recognized that this was necessarily a political process and there was no objective means to make these decisions. Someone had to create the district maps and someone had to approve them. Whether it be the states, some independent body created by the states, Congress, or some independent body created by Congress, people have always been biased, even unconsciously subject to making decisions that benefit their own belief systems if not outright partisan in the quest for power. As James Madison himself put, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Since we’re not angels, the Founders set up redistricting as a state by state fight with judicial oversight at both the state and federal level, and built in a mechanism that would remake the districts every decade in any event, meaning any partisan advantage would be short lived and as we have seen now, if states feel it’s necessary, they can retaliate against one another as they see fit. Is it ideal? No, but nothing in human affairs is, not in a world where politics remains all about power and the only principle we should expect politicians to follow is to preserve and expand their own. We should also expect partisans to do the same, doing anything legally to empower their preferred party over another. The arguments otherwise either flat or are self serving. Ms. Reidl, for example, continued to rationalize her decision to vote for what she hates, citing some kind of paradox where more gerrymandering leads to less gerrymandering. “Paradoxically, I consider this the best way to ultimately discourage mid-decade gerrymanders because it prevents the instigators from being rewarded with much more net House seats. And I believe this cross-state backlash will discourage this mid-decade gambit from being repeated in the future.” To the extent there’s been a backlash so far, it has taken the form of another state pursuing a more gerrymandered map, not reducing it. While anything is possible in the future, the maps will be rewritten and it’s doubtful to me at least that an anti-gerrymandering platform is going to garner anyone any real support in states with any kind of partisan tilt. Why would a Democrat in a Democrat state vote for potentially less Democrat seats? Even should it do so, as we have seen in California, Virginia, and perhaps Florida, politicians can rewrite the districts anyway even in the face of their own state Constitutions, so what is ultimately the point?
If anything, Ms. Reidl’s final assertion is even more doubtful and appears to have even less of a point. “Ultimately, a national ban on gerrymandering is central to fixing Congress. But passively letting one side gerrymander and be rewarded for it would move us further away from that point.” Even setting aside that a national ban on gerrymandering is not likely to be effective because there is no objective way to create districts and were there some at least arbitrary standard in place, Congress could conceivably bypass it for their own purposes, why does anyone believe that voting for a gerrymander in Virginia would somehow prompt Congress to act, when it would be voted on by those who weren’t affected in the first place? Are Democrats really going to get together and vote at the federal level for less Democrats? Are Republicans? Though she closed her tweet by insisting, “Conservatives should recognize this ‘peace through strength’ principle: The best way to discourage war is not to unilaterally disarm, but rather to build a strong enough military to discourage the other side from launching the next war,” it’s equally hard to see how the principle applies here when there is no incentive for anyone to disarm and the maps will get remade in 2032 regardless? While I might personally prefer we lived in some kind of ideal, more objective world, we do not and while I might personally entertain a realistic fix, none has really been presented other than platitudes that have already been undermined by actual events. At this point, the only thing I really want to see is an end to the self-righteous sanctimony and an open admission that the gerrymander wars are what politics is always about, power, plain and simple.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 