Reflections on the Gerrymanders

 

The original gerrymander

I was confused by reports on the latest Supreme Court outrage.  A decision that allows states to gerrymander to reduce minority representation but not to increase it???  How does that work?

It appears that the answer is that the Supreme Court held that states may not take race into account in drawing voting districts may may consider partisanship.  The practical effect of this was to remove the last barrier to Republican gerrymandering in southern states.  Up till now, Republican legislatures in the South were not allowed to deliberately break up Black districts.  They are now free to do so, so long as they claim to be setting boundaries for partisan, rather than racial, reasons.  Presumably Democratic states could do the opposite -- maximize minority representation so long as they claim partisan motives.

Naturally Republicans are cackling gleefully, boasting about redrawing their districts to ensure that Republicans have permanent control of Congress.

Just last week, Republicans were outraged that Virginia had redrawn its districts to move Democrats' advantage from 6-5 to 10-1.  And given the general makeup of the Virginia electorate, that move, taken by itself, would be egregiously unfair.  But Republicans are ignoring their own behavior leading up to the Virginia move, redrawing electoral maps in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina, with Florida next in line.  

And no, this is not two children on the playground yelling about who started it, or a game of tit for tat. This is about whether Democrats will unilaterally disarm, giving Republicans a complete free hand to draw districts to their advantage while Democrats refrain.  Last week Republicans were denouncing how unfair the Virginia gerrymander was and pointing out other Democratic states that were gerrymandered (sometimes even denouncing states with just one Representative for not having a proportionate share of Republicans!) while totally ignoring the gerrymanders in Republican states.  Now Republicans are boasting about redrawing districts so as to ensure that Democrats can never hold Congress again.  

Sigh!  I know Republicans don't read my blog.  (Neither does anyone else, really).  But simply put, the options are like this:

No one gerrymanders	Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	Both parties gerrymander

So far as I can tell, Democrats, given the opportunity to rank their preferences, would do it as follows:

1. No one gerrymanders	4. Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
3. Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	2. Both parties gerrymander

Republicans, by contrast, appear to rank their preferences as follows:

4. No one gerrymanders	1. Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
4. Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	4. Both parties gerrymander

It is not even clear to me that Republicans are able to distinguish among the other three options.