Tom
Paine.com
Winner
takes all
By Steven Hill and Rob Richie
May 4, 2004
Led by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and George
Bush's political mastermind Karl Rove, Republicans last year
brought the blood sport of legislative redistricting to new
lows by spurring Texas and Colorado to gerrymander���redraw to
favor a particular party���congressional districts mid-decade.
While Colorado's Supreme Court tossed out the state's plan,
the Texas plan���and with it potentially a Republican pickup
of seven seats���was waved forward by John Ashcroft's Justice
Department and the federal courts.
Now the Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue by
lamenting the state of affairs, but a plurality declared
there's nothing it can do about partisan redistricting. In Vieth
v. Jubelirer, a challenge was made to a Republican
partisan gerrymander in Pennsylvania that marked the first
gerrymandering case taken by the court since 1986. In a 5-4
ruling that echoed Bush v. Gore (the breakdown of votes
on the Court was the same, and the political implications for
control of the U.S. House somewhat comparable), the Court
rejected a Democratic challenge, making it possible that
Pennsylvania Republicans will take 13 of 19 seats even as John
Kerry wins the statewide vote. Rather than the hoped-for
surprise knockout, Democrats and their allies must prepare
themselves for a long reform brawl.
As a quick tutorial, every 10 years the U.S. Census
releases new population data, and elected officials in nearly
every political jurisdiction in the nation carve up the
political landscape into new legislative districts to ensure
representatives have an equal number of constituents.
Some cities and states have procedures to promote public
interest in this redistricting process, but most do little to
prevent the creation of a hodgepodge of districts
gerrymandered to protect incumbents and build partisan
advantage. With increasingly sophisticated computer software,
polling results and demographic data, incumbent legislators
quite literally choose the voters before the voters have a
chance to choose them. As a result of the redistricting
process, most voters are locked into one-party districts where
their only real choice at election time is to ratify the
incumbent or heir apparent of the party controlling that
district.
Calling For Change
After years of simmering as a backburner concern for wonks
and insiders, redistricting has burst onto the national scene
in the wake of a sharp rise in non-competitive elections and
hardened partisan lines in Congress and many states. Nearly
all major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los
Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street
Journal and Washington Post have called for reforms
to provide greater fairness and voter choice, usually based on
the criteria-driven process instituted in Iowa in the '80s.
Unlike many reforms, fair redistricting has drawn fervent
support from across the spectrum, ranging from conservatives
at The Wall Street Journal and the Cato Institute to
moderate Republicans like Iowa Congressman Jim Leach and
Arizona Sen. John McCain and Democrats like former Vermont
Gov. Howard Dean and Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer.
It was bad enough that in 2001 both Republicans and
Democrats elevated incumbent protection in redistricting to
new levels. In California, for example, incumbent U.S. House
Democrats paid $20,000 apiece to a redistricting
consultant���the brother of an incumbent���to have
"designer districts" drawn for them. Republicans
went along with this cozy arrangement in exchange for their
own safe seats. The result was an unbroken parade of landslide
wins, with no challenger to an incumbent winning even 40
percent of the vote. Nationally, only four challengers
defeated House incumbents���the fewest in history���while
fewer than one in 10 races were won by competitive margins
inside 55 percent to 45 percent.
The lockdown of the U.S. House has major repercussions for
our political process and representative government. Elected
every two years, with representatives closer to the people
than senators or the president, the House was designed to
reflect the will and different interests of the nation. The
reality is far different. Hardly any members can be held
electorally accountable, given the paucity of primary
challenges (indeed, more members have died in office than lost
in primaries in the last decade), lopsided general elections
grounded in their incumbency advantages, and districts drawn
to have a majority of voters backing their party. The growth
in seats held by women and people of color has come to a
standstill after a sharp rise in 1992, after the last
redistricting.
Control of the House is nearly as fixed in stone as the
routine 98 percent re-election rates. Since 1954, control of
the U.S. House has changed just once, when Newt Gingrich and
Republicans took over in 1994. Democrats gained a few seats in
each election between 1996 and 2000, but Republicans cemented
their grip in 2002 after dominating redistricting in several
large states. Despite Democrats theoretically needing to only
pick up 12 seats to regain the House, few observers believe
that possible this decade without a dramatic voter surge
toward Democrats. A win for George W. Bush in 2004 would make
it even harder for Democrats, as it likely would lead to a
wave of retirements of Democratic members whose only chance at
influence is a sympathetic president.
Echos Of Election 2000
Redistricting was a key reason for Republican success in
2002. Although Al Gore won a half million more votes than
George Bush in 2000, Bush carried 241 of current House
districts, compared to only 194 for Gore���a bias toward
Republicans that at this point is tied to where the parties
gain their support, with the Democratic vote more cosmopolitan
and more concentrated in cities. Gore won more votes than Bush
in the combined votes cast in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, but after having unfettered control of
redistricting in those states, Republicans now hold a whopping
51 out of 77 seats elected from those areas���including 18 of
25 seats in Florida. Given that Democrats hold a majority of
House seats in the remaining 46 states, it's fair to say that
the key elections for House control were not in 2002, but in
those states' 1998 gubernatorial elections swept by
Republicans who then helped dominate congressional
redistricting.
Some thought Republicans just may have overplayed their
hand in their relentless drive for a secure majority. Last
spring, Colorado Republicans adopted a new plan to protect a
vulnerable congressional incumbent merely two days after its
introduction. In Texas, things reached truly wacky dimensions,
involving the potentially illegal use of federal agents to
apprehend 51 Democratic state legislators who had gone AWOL to
prevent having a quorum that could enact the redistricting.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry convened special session after
special session until finally winning a plan designed to
switch seven seats to his party. Those high-profile
shenanigans may have been what spurred the Supreme Court to
rule on the challenge to the Pennsylvania gerrymander.
Gerrymandering is bad enough without the prospect of each new
legislative majority adjusting lines to protects its friends
and hurt their enemies after every election. But four justices
(Scalia, Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas) made it clear they
would reject any political gerrymandering claim, and the
decisive fifth vote���Kennedy���dangled out the slimmest of
hopes when he essentially said "keep fishing and maybe
you'll get a bite."
Illinios' Example
So what now? Congress has every right���and indeed
responsibility���to regulate congressional redistricting. Not
doing so is analogous to allowing elected officials to count
votes in their own elections behind closed doors. States also
can take action on their own, and groups like Common Cause are
contemplating state ballot measures.
But even with nonpartisan redistricting, the number of
competitive districts around the nation would likely rise from
today's dismal one in 10 seats to perhaps one in six���and
still do little to boost women and racial minorities. What we
ultimately must do is take on winner-take-all elections, which
are at the root of much of what ails the body politics. One
example of how this could fit in with in American traditions
comes from Illinois, which for more than a century elected its
state legislature with a semi-proportional representation
method. Lowering the victory threshold for candidates from 50
percent to 25 percent didn't threaten the two-party system,
but it did broaden representation within the parties and
promote more bipartisan policy. It also gave most voters
better choices and fairer representation. Full representation
is a win-win for women, racial minorities and supporters of
more partisan fairness and more competitive elections. With it
in place, voters���rather than district lines���are the key to
defining representation.
The lesson from the Supreme Court is that we must win a
fair democracy in the political process. With voter turnout
plummeting, most of us living in thoroughly noncompetitive
districts, and the "People's House" gerrymandered so
that one party has dominant control, we could cancel most
legislative elections and few would notice. In the '90s, an
angry public lashed out by voting overwhelmingly for term
limits. Now it's time for a drive to give voters real choices,
new voices and fair representation.
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