Gerrymandering: Legally rigging elections

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

The essence of democracy is what transpires on election day. When elected officials seek to manipulate voting districts to ensure that one party or another is favored in a specific geographic area, it is the antithesis of democracy. It is a process that keeps bad incumbents in power and nullifies the power of those unfortunate enough to live in areas where they are members of the political party that has a statistical minority in a district.  

Gerrymandering is very much in the news today, but it has existed for a long time. It is a practice that began in 1812 when Massachusetts Governor, Democratic-Republican Elbridge Gerry signed off on a bill that involved selectively drawn electoral district boundary lines to ensure the success of senatorial candidates in his party. Gerry was an original signer of the Declaration of Independence and the fifth vice president of the United States who served in the Madison Administration.

There are two ways to gerrymander a voting district.  The first way is known as “cracking,” which is a strategy that dilutes the power of a rival political party and makes it virtually impossible for that party to win a district. The second way is known as packing, which is to concentrate a rival party in one district so heavily that it allows them to win that district by a healthy majority, but serves to remove voters of that party from other districts and has the net effect of giving up one district to win several others. Both practices subvert the electoral process and make the ballots of many voters meaningless based on where voters reside.

So, after 213 years, why hasn’t this practice been deemed unconstitutional? It’s probably for the same reason that term limits for Congressional representatives have been ignored by members of Congress. It keeps the “right” (and left) people in power. Many politicians who are elected owe their elections to gerrymandering, so they will not kill the goose that laid their golden eggs.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made racial gerrymandering illegal, but sadly, in  2019 Supreme Court ruled in the case of Rucho v Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering claims “present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” This ruling allowed red and blue state politicians to purposefully ignore the ballots of their voters and get away with it.    

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Rucho opinion for the Court wrote, “the fact that such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles,’ … does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary.” Well, if this doesn’t lie with the highest court in the land, and it is admittedly against the principles of a democratic government, where then does the solution lie?

The rationalizations of the Supreme Court are not new. The Dred Scott Decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which set in motion the doctrine of separate but equal for more than half a century, are excellent examples of the Court’s refusal to correct egregious errors that impact the country. Are we really going to rely upon the legislative branch to cut their own throats? Anyone who believes legislators will create a process that may cost them their bids for reelection probably still believes Biden was mentally competent.

Americans have a right to have their vote count and not be manipulated by power-hungry political bosses who act as if they are entitled to draw districts that look like the mark of Zorro to suit their political aspirations. An original criticism from the Boston Gazette of Elbridge Gerry’s first gerrymandered district compared the way it was drawn to a salamander.

Members of minority parties are at the mercy of states that neuter their votes and practically make it useless for them to even vote. Take, for example, Illinois, which adopted its current map in 2021. Its districts are drawn in such a way that it leads to unequal voter density and one only needs to look at its 13th Congressional District to understand that an area covering approximately 2300 square miles is filled with such a heavy concentration of democratic voters that it would be nearly impossible for a republican to win.

California has 52 seats in the House of Representatives. Democrats control 43 seats and republicans control 9 seats. This means that democrats make up 83% of House of Representatives members and Republicans make up 17% of members of the House. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Democratic voters only make up 45.3% of the voters in that state, yet occupy 83% of House seats.  Is this reasonable? New York has a similar situation to California, with 26 total House of Representatives seats. Democrats hold 73% of the seats in the House of Representatives; however, according to the Independent Voter Project, the percentage of registered democrats in New York is only 47.38%.  

Politicians, traditionally, are not known for their honesty and egalitarian ways. Despite making speeches that sound like they really care about the American public, most are only concerned about one thing: being reelected. Campaign promises are more like bait and switch propositions and are not subject to the same kind of assurances that companies make about their products or face legal consequences. There are no consequences for not fulfilling a campaign promise.

Members of Congress have turned public service into money-making propositions. According to Politifact, the last time members of Congress filled out financial disclosures in 2018, 61 out of 100 US senators were millionaires (61%). It’s obvious that being in politics is a lucrative business and gerrymandering is a key to keeping incumbents in power.

George Washington warned about the dangers of political parties in his farewell address, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. ”  

Sadly, this warning has turned into a reality, and as politics becomes more punitive than practical, those in power will use the electoral process to keep those “unprincipled men” in leadership positions, not to serve the people, but to serve a system that has strayed from what it means to be a democracy.