U.S. District Judge Steve Jones upheld Republican legislators’ new Georgia congressional map Thursday, a blow to House Democrats’ efforts to win the lower chamber — but was careful to avoid the most far-reaching question embedded in the case.
I find the entire concept of ‘gerrymandering’ disgusting. For our legal experts - can congressional legislation make it illegal or will it take a constituional amendment?
And of course, what would our corrupted scotus say to an attempted congressional fix, since they seem to think that political gerrymanders are just fine.
I wouldn’t call myself a Constitutional expert, but there’s nothing in the Constitution about gerrymandering, so I don’t see how a constitutional amendment would be required.
I can tell you about our experience here in Ohio. We are on our third iteration of trying to fix gerrymandering now.
In 2015, the first initiative was passed that attempted to limit gerrymandering in statutory law. The legislature ignored it by amending the citizen-passed statute.
So in 2017, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters banded together to work on a constitutional amendment that would institute a non-partisan citizen commission to handle redistricting. The legislature got scared, and the initiative sponsors weren’t certain they could get the signatures to force the issue onto the ballot. Instead, they negotiated with the legislature to write a new amendment that limited the legislature’s ability to crack and pack districts. This was put before the voters and passed.
After the 2020 Census results were released, the Republicans in the state legislature came up with a map that preserved their supermajority. This was essentially the only map that sort-of met the legal requirements and maintained their dominance in the legislature. It was repeatedly ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court. The citizens of Ohio were betrayed by Governor DeWine and Secretary of State LaRose who voted with the Republican legislative appointees, and blamed the Democratic commission representatives for their intransigence. Net result is that we have gerrymandered maps that will be re-drawn next year, and (absent changes in the system) will result in maps disgustingly close to our current gerrymander.
So now we have petition drive to put the matter to a vote again. This time there will be no question of dealing with the legislature, and if passed a non-partisan citizen’s commission will draw new lines in 2025 and after each decennial census.
I think we have a good chance of passing this initiative, because the Republican legislature is just out-of-control. In 2022, they passed a revision of our election laws eliminating special elections in August of odd-numbered years. The justification was that there weren’t any state-wide offices at stake, there were rarely state-level issues that can’t wait for November, they have exceedingly low turn-out, and they are expensive. Then, this year, the sprung a new single-issue August Special Election on us to raise the vote requirement to pass citizen initiatives to 60% of votes cast and increase the signature requirements to even get an initiative to the ballot. This of course was intended to gut the Reproductive Rights Amendment we passed in November (and as a by-product, cripple the Citizens-not-Politicians signature drive that was already in the planning stage).
I’ve laid my rant out before, so I’ll spare you the recitation. But we need amendments to make it clear that gerrymanders are unacceptable precisely because there is nothing in the Constitution about gerrymandering. There is no chance of doing on a national level, because the GQP will blockade any attempt in Congress, and a Constitutional Convention would be exceedingly dangerous. Since we can’t do it nationally, we’ll have to do it on a state-by-state basis.
That’s pretty much what I thought. Of course the chances of congressional legislation to deal with the problem actually passing is zero since representatives and senators from a powerful political cult would never allow it.
The cult sees gerrymandering as a significant way to leverage their minority status, not to mention that the cult is actually opposed to democracy.
Yes, that is why the Supreme Court typically rules non-racial gerrymanders are acceptable. It’s not explicitly forbidden and the Constitution only says that it’s up to the states to choose their methods (within reason*).
* for various and rather vague definitions of “reason”.
I keep thinking the heads of a few politicians on pikes on the lawns of various state capitols would be effective but I’ve been called extreme.
Gerrymandered election = rigged election. Go figure.
to maintain their 9-5 seat advantage
We know that without votes being cast?
Something’s wrong with our “representative” process.
Put the blame where it belongs–Boris Manchin and Natasha Sinema refused to kill the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act that would have banned gerrymandering. Instead they sided with every Republican in the Senate to preserve the right of the GOP to stack the deck.
The Constitution doesn’t guarantee democracy.
So if voting systems in place are undemocratic…so what?
The trouble with addressing gerrymandering on a state level is that Republicans are not going to give an inch, while Democrats, in a desire to do good will unilaterally disarm. No, there must be a federal solution.
Fortunately, there are statistical ways to describe the level of gerrymandering , and thus offer a way to combat it. Assuming, of course, that enough elected officials actually want to.
In the right hands it does.
If Americans sleep on it (pre Dobbs), then here we are.
There’s some amazing stats there. Thanks!
I’d say the blame there lies with every GOP Senator plus Manchin and Sinema
Be strong, ye faint of heart.
I do believe that we will get gerrymandering addressed here in Ohio, because good-government Republican voters (and there are more of them than you might suspect) are pretty pissed off about what our state legislature is doing. Not only are they pissed-off many of them recognize that the root of the problem is the way we draw districts.
Now, we do have an advantage over other states in that we have the citizen initiative in our state constitution (a remnant from the Progressive movement of the late IXX and early XX Centuries). States without the citizen initiative have a much heavier lift.
Describing the level of gerrymandering is one thing and it’s a useful thing for comparing redistricting proposals. But it does nothing whatever about the real problem, which is politicians picking constituencies.
OT
Let us not forget the wsr in Ukraine. America is shirking its duty to that country. They need our hrlp right now. Congress needs to fo its goddamned job and send aid…
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By Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal, Matt Meyer and Tori B. Powell, CNN
I saw this and first thought was thanks, Republicans. Putin can now act with impunity because no one is coming to save Ukraine anymore.
No one.
Putin has owned a lot of those Republicans for a very long time. He’s calling in his chits.