Tag: gerrymandering

How conservatives rigged our politics: Republicans are beating Democrats at a game they don’t even know they’re playing

AlterNet logoAccording to Gallup polling, more Americans identify as Democrats than Republicans. On average, roughly 29 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans, and 41 percent as independent. It’s close, but the edge is enough that one would expect our legislatures, courts, and governorships to reflect that advantage.

They don’t. Despite being the less popular party, Republicans have controlled the majority of our state legislatures and governorships for the past decade. In twenty-two states, Republicans control both branches of government, compared with only sixteen for Democrats. A majority of Supreme Court justices have also been appointed by Republican presidents. And Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes. How have Republicans pulled this off?

In The Democracy Fix, Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society (and a regular writer for this magazine), gives a detailed and often demoralizing account of how Republicans seized political power that vastly exceeds the public support for their ideas. Tracing the origin story back to Lewis Powell’s memo—in which the then corporate attorney who would later become a Supreme Court justice outlined a plan for conservative dominance of public policymaking—Fredrickson shows how the GOP used gerrymandering, voter suppression, dubious scholarship, and dangerous media outlets to rig the system in their favor. And although she offers a plan for Democrats to fight back, it feels like Republicans have already won a game Democrats didn’t realize they were playing. Continue reading.

How Partisan Gerrymandering Limits Access to Health Care

NOTE:  Minnesota will be redistricted after this year’s census. This is decided by the Minnesota Legislature. The state Republican Party in states they control have used gerrymandering to increase their representation. Please pay attention, stay engaged and help stop this from happening in Minnesota.

Center for American Progress logoIntroduction and summary

More than a dozen states are denying their own residents expanded access to Medicaid, despite the fact that the federal government would pay for nearly the entire cost under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Medicaid plays a critical role in Americans’ access to health care, paying for half of all births in the United States,1 providing resources to combat the opioid epidemic, and helping keep rural hospitals financially afloat. Evidence shows that in states that have implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, low-income populations have benefited from not only better access to care but also greater financial stability, fewer evictions, and lower poverty rates.2

While Medicaid enjoys strong public support, officials in a handful of states are refusing to act in the interests of their own citizens. Many of these states have failed to expand Medicaid because of partisan gerrymandering—the practice of drawing district lines to unfairly favor particular politicians or political parties.3 By gerrymandering their districts, politicians can stay in power—and keep their political parties in power—even if they lose voter support. And that means that on issues such as the expansion of Medicaid, conservative politicians can cater to the extreme right wing and oppose policies that would save lives at minimal cost to state taxpayers.

The cost of this distortion is high. In North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia—three states that have not expanded Medicaid—1 million more people would have been insured and roughly 3,000 deaths would have been prevented in 2019 alone if the expansion had been fully implemented. In Michigan—another state with heavily gerrymandered districts—conservatives in control of the Legislature have attempted to limit beneficiaries’ access to Medicaid through the imposition of burdensome work requirements. Evidence shows, however, that Medicaid work requirements not only result in low-income people losing health coverage but also fail at their purported objective of boosting employment. Continue reading.

Supreme Court throws out challenge to Michigan electoral map

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court, in another defeat for gerrymandering reformers, overturned a lower court’s ruling that Michigan’s electoral districts are overly partisan and need to be redrawn.

Monday’s order follows a June decision from the nation’s top court that found that questions related to partisan gerrymandering are not under the jurisdiction of federal courts.

The new order returns the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. A three-judge panel in that court had ruled that 34 state legislative and congressional districts needed to be redrawn because they were designed to favor Republicans.

View the complete October 21 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

The Battle Over the Files of a Gerrymandering Mastermind

New York Times logoAt the heart of a decisive court ruling on Tuesday striking down North Carolina’s state legislative maps was evidence culled from the computer backups of the man who drew them: Thomas B. Hofeller, the Republican strategist and master of gerrymandering, who died last year.

Documents from the backups, which surfaced after his death, were also central to the legal battle over adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. An enormous stash of digital files, covering Mr. Hofeller’s work in almost every state, has yet to be examined.

But in a state court in Raleigh, N.C., another courtroom battle is underway. Its aim is to ensure that those files are never publicly scrutinized.

View the complete September 4 by Michael Wines on The New York Times website here.

It’s Not Just the White House in 2020. The Power to Draw Maps Is Also at Stake.

New York Times logoDALLAS — Only hours after the United States Supreme Court said it could do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering of the nation’s political maps, Eric H. Holder Jr. had a message for his fellow Democrats in downtown Dallas.

“Texas is a place where we have to win,” Mr. Holder, who served as attorney general during Barack Obama’s presidency, said last week. “This is doable. This is possible.”

Mr. Holder was not talking about the 2020 presidential election. He was not talking about a congressional race. He was talking about the nine seats Democrats would need to flip to wrest control of the Texas House of Representatives and gain a voice in the redistricting process.

View the complete July 5 article by Mitch Smith and Timothy Williams on The New York Times website here.

Gerrymandering and the Rising Risk of a Monopoly on Power

New York Times logoThe Supreme Court’s decision merely preserves the status quo, but together with other trends, it could put a strain on democracy.

At some point or another over the last decade, Democrats have won the most votes but lost national elections for the presidency, the House and the Senate.

Partisan gerrymandering is just one of the reasons the Democrats are at such a disadvantage. But the Supreme Court’s decision on gerrymandering Thursday came as long-term political and demographic trends threaten to put Democrats at an even greater disadvantage in the Senate and perhaps also the presidency.

It’s even possible to imagine a future in which Republicans could effectively claim a monopoly on federal power despite continued weakness in the national vote.

View the complete June 28 article by Nate Cohn on The New York Times website here.

What is gerrymandering and why is it problematic?

Washington Post logoIt’s a complicated topic, but we’ve got a simple visual aid

Note: This is an update to a story that was originally published in 2015.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the federal courts have no rule to play in adjudicating questions of partisan gerrymandering, essentially letting individual states decide how best to deal with the question.

In most states, the drawing of congressional and legislative districts is handled by state legislatures. That creates a strong incentive for partisan lawmakers to draw districts in a way that benefits their own party. Here’s how it works. Continue reading “What is gerrymandering and why is it problematic?”

It was a terrible day for democracy in the Supreme Court

Don’t let the census case fool you.

The Supreme Court handed down two opinions on Thursday which could shape American democracy for decades.

The first, Rucho v. Common Cause, held that suits challenging partisan gerrymanders are entirely beyond the power of the federal courts to adjudicate. Henceforth, state lawmakers may draw the most aggressively partisan gerrymanders they (and their computers) can come up with. They may draw, as Wisconsin did, a gerrymander so impervious to democracythat Republicans win nearly two-thirds of the state assembly seats even in an election where they won 54% of the popular vote.

And the entire federal bench must sit on its hands and allow this to happen.

View the complete June 27 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump rage-tweets an idea that would violate the Constitution in furious response to the Supreme Court

AlterNet logoIn a blow to the Trump administration’s plans, Chief Justice of the United State John Roberts issued an opinion Thursday ruling against the Commerce Department’s plan to include a citizenship question on the upcoming 2020 Census.

While the administration claimed that the question was designed to help the Justice Department enforce the Voting Rights Act, Roberts and a majority of the court found that this explanation was not supported by the evidence in the case, and the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to remand the decision back to the agency. Many observers argued this will likely prevent the department from adding the question to the Census in time for the upcoming Census (though there’s some debate about this), and President Donald Trump, in two rage-filled tweets sent from his Japan trip, said he wants to delay the process:

View the complete Jun 27 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.