Just Ducky: Why the Court Loves a Good Gerrymander (The Long Way Home 5.22.26)

My dissatisfaction with politics and politicians usually simmers in a stewpot of cynicism. But sometimes the pot boils over as it did when the US Court of Supremes ruled on April 29 in the case Louisiana v. Callais. The decision virtually ends racial gerrymandering, the practice of drawing legislative district lines to deliberately increase or decrease the political power of a specific racial or ethnic group. On the other hand, the court said that partisan gerrymandering, drawing boundaries to increase the power of entrenched partisan officeholders, is just ducky. And that’s why I’m boiling. 

The Constitution never mentions "redistricting" or "districts" at all. It requires the Census every ten years to, among countless other things, determine how many Representatives each state gets based on population. The number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives was capped at 435 by Congress in 1929, and that is where it stands today. Apparently, the grand poobahs in Washington were afraid of getting too many newcomers “in the House.” They couldn’t fit more desks in the chamber, and keeping the newcomers in line with party bosses was gonna be too difficult.

In 1910, a representative had about 210,000 constituents. Today, it’s over 760,000. This century-old law eventually led to the 1964 Supreme Court case Reynolds v. Sims, which required that every district be mathematically identical in size. Known euphemistically as “One Person, One Vote.”

The political industrial complex realized that, since they needed to draw district lines to balance the numbers, they could draw those lines to pick their voters. Geographic common sense was tabled in favor of artistic partisan capture. No matter how bizarre a district's ultimate shape, if it makes for a “safe seat,” almost like a virtual lifetime appointment in Washington or St. Paul for one party or the other, the Supremes think that’s just fine. After all, who knows more about lifetime appointments than the black-shrouded elite?

The rise of high-tech computing power over the last sixty years has enabled the partisan consultants who draw these maps in most states to pick and choose, at the individual level, who to include and who to exclude in a given district. They use widely available data about you and me that might include whether we have a fairly new car and shop at Nordstroms, or have a ten-year-old car and shop at Walmart. And then, there’s race, the thing that got this rant started. 

With 4.3 million eligible voters, Minnesota’s eight congressional districts contain more than half a million voters. In my arrogant opinion, geographic legislative boundaries are a much better option. If one district has 200,000 voters, and a more populous one has 800,000, who is hurt? Basically, no one. 

I think House districts should look like geometric shapes. Bizarre shapes are a red flag for me. If a district looks like a Rorschach test, it’s almost certain that someone was massaging the data to produce a specific partisan result. Districts don’t need to have an equal number of citizens to be fair, despite what the Supremes decided decades ago. The average person, most everyone really, would have a tough time just naming their Representative, much less knowing what district they live in.

Making redistricting a once-a-decade event should be a priority. Mid-decade redistricting was once a rare emergency, usually court-ordered, when a map was found to be a racial gerrymander or to violate the one-person, one-vote rule.  Redistricting became a potent "tactical weapon" used by partisan mapmakers.

Outside of court orders, states almost never touched their maps mid-decade. It was considered a breach of protocol and a waste of resources. That changed forever in 2003. 

After the GOP took control of the Texas legislature, they decided to redraw the congressional map mid-decade purely for partisan gain, and without a court order. In 2006, the Supremes ruled that mid-decade redistricting for purely partisan reasons is not unconstitutional, it's EFFING fine. They let every state legislature know that if they have the power to redraw the map at any time to help their party, go for it. 

Since the Texas case, mid-decade shifts have become a recurring profit-making program for whichever party holds power. Since the Louisiana v. Callais decision a couple of weeks ago, the states of the old Confederacy have jumped right into redistricting for an election that is less than six months away. Historically, a scale unheard of in modern times.

When the map's boundaries are redrawn every couple of years based on the partisan or racial whims of the legislature, accountability vanishes, and voters’ trust is lost.

Eliminating the requirement that a district have equal numbers of voters and making redistricting by a nonpartisan panel mandatory, no more often than once a decade, would put an end to this BS.

When 90% of House districts are non-competitive, like they are now, voters aren't choosing their representatives; the political hacks have chosen their voters. And for God’s sake, minority majority districts like the ones being drawn out of existence right now are not the problem--political opportunism and racism are.