Commentaries
By CVD Director Rob Richie
January
2002
The Center for Voting and
Democracy's Executive Director Rob Richie has had several articles
and commentaries published recently, including pieces in the Boston
Review, TomPaine.Com, the book
Challenges to Equality and British
Public Management and Policy Association's Review. Upcoming articles will
run in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Extra! and two upcoming books.
In addition, see recent published commentaries from
Deputy Director Eric Olson and National
Field Director Dan Johnson-Weinberger. Below are two letters printed in
the Washington Post and New York Times and a Christian
Science Monitor
commentary written with
Steven Hill.
Washington
Post The Value of a Vote December 20,
2001
Joanne Dann
made a number of cogent points in her Dec. 2 Outlook piece arguing that
it is time to establish criteria-driven,
nonpartisan approaches to redistricting. But I would like to correct one error
and suggest a broader prescription. First, only 42 U.S. House races were
won by less than 10 percent in 2000--meaning that for
the second straight election, fewer than one in 10 House races
could be categorized as competitive. Second,
criteria-driven redistricting creates more competitive elections, but only to a
point. In Massachusetts, for example, all House seats are held by
Democrats in districts where George W. Bush won no more than 38 percent,
while in Nebraska, all House seats are held by Republicans in districts
where Al Gore won no more than 38 percent of the vote. The
country has many such swaths, where voters are doomed
to no-choice elections under winner-take-all rules no matter how district
lines are sliced and diced. We should join most
well-established democracies in using systems of proportional representation
in multi-seat districts. Use of proportional systems in modest
three-seat districts would lower the share of votes necessary to win to 25
percent, which at least would give supporters of both major parties a
fighting chance to win everywhere in the nation and provide
a fairer balance among moderates and partisans.
Versions
of the following commentary appeared in other publications,
including the San
Jose Mercury News.
Christian Science Monitor Redistricting
abuses voter trust By Rob Richie and Steven Hill
January 7, 2002
Our elected leaders have been quick to applaud
Americans' renewed civic pride in the wake of Sept. 11. Yet behind
closed doors, far too many are betraying voters' trust by
manipulating our winner-take-all electoral rules to protect their
incumbency.
Although not well understood by many voters, the most
egregious tool of incumbent protection is redistricting. Whoever
controls redistricting - technically the state legislatures, but
often in practice a small number of political leaders and
consultants - has the God-like powers to guarantee not only which
political party wins a majority of seats, but also to make or break
individual political careers.
Every 10 years, redistricting arrives like a recurring
plague of locusts. After the release of new census numbers at the
start of a decade, all legislative districts across the nation must
be redrawn to ensure that they are closely equal in population.
Redrawing district lines may sound like an innocent
enterprise, but it just well may be the ugliest, most partisan part
of our politics.
The tools are powerful computers and software that are
increasingly sophisticated and precise. The tactics are "packing"
and "cracking": packing as many opponents into as few districts as
possible and cracking an opponent's natural base into different
districts.
Does redistricting make a difference? You bet it does.
In Virginia, the Democrats in 2001 won their first gubernatorial
race since 1989. But Republicans went from barely controlling the
statehouse to a two-thirds majority. How? That's right - Republicans
drew the district lines.
Virginia is not alone. In several states, one party
has stuck it to the other - just ask a Republican mugged in Georgia
or Maryland, or a Democrat roughed up in Michigan or Pennsylvania.
But the real story of the latest redistricting cycle
has been that both parties typically have colluded to take on their
real enemy: the voters. With half the states having completed
redistricting, the past year will go down in political history for
the crass way it has raised "incumbent protection" to a new level.
Take California. The California Democratic Party
controlled redistricting, and its leaders decided to cement their
advantage rather than expand it. Incumbents took no chances.
Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez acknowledged to the
Orange County Register that she and most of her Democratic US House
colleagues each forked over $20,000 to Michael Berman, the
consultant charged by the Democratic Party to craft the
redistricting plan.
The money was classic "protection money." Sanchez
stated "$20,000 is nothing to keep your seat. I spend $2 million
[campaigning] every election. If my colleagues are smart, they'll
pay their $20,000, and Michael will draw the district they can win
in."
California's Republican Party, which has vociferously
opposed past Democratic redistricting plans, was largely mute this
time. That's because their incumbents also were bought off with the
promise of safe seats. The one incumbent facing a tough reelection
battle promptly announced his retirement; the rest are likely free
from serious competition for the next 10 years.
The story has been the same in state after state. The
Wall Street Journal in a November editorial titled "The Gerrymander
Scandal" estimated that as few as 30 of the 435 US House seats will
be competitive in 2002. Already, fewer than 1 in 10 House seats were
won by competitive margins of less than 10 percent in 1998 and 2000.
The ones hurt by these back-room deals are the voters.
For most, their only real choice in the next decade will be to
ratify the candidate of the party that was handed that district in
redistricting. One-party fiefdoms will be the rule no matter what
changes are made in campaign financing and term limits until we
reform the redistricting process or turn to voter-friendly electoral
systems like proportional representation.
Congress in fact has full authority to set national
standards that could at least curb the most egregious cases of
gerrymandering. Unfortunately, not a single bill has been proposed
in years to lessen the impact of politics in redistricting.
There once was a time when voters went to the polls on
the first Tuesday in November and picked their representatives. But
that's changed. Now the representatives pick the voters first.
Following on the heels of the 2000 election debacle, this only
further undermines confidence in our political system.
Rob Richie and Steven Hill are, respectively, the
executive director and the western regional director of the Center
for Voting and Democracy and co- authors of "Whose Vote Counts?"
(Beacon Press, 2001).
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