‘Putin-style democracy’: how Republicans gerrymander the map

[Rogue Valley]

‘Putin-style democracy’: how Republicans gerrymander the map

4/9/21
Republicans believe they have a great chance to win control of the US House of Representatives in 2022, needing a swing of about six seats to depose Nancy Pelosi as speaker and derail Joe Biden’s agenda. To help themselves over the top, they are advancing voter suppression laws in almost every state, hoping to minimize Democratic turnout. But Republicans are also preparing another, arguably more powerful tool, which experts believe could let them take control of the House without winning a single vote beyond their 2020 tally, or for that matter blocking a single Democratic voter. That tool is redistricting – the redrawing of congressional boundaries, undertaken once every 10 years – and Republicans have unilateral control of it in a critical number of states. “Public sentiment in 2020 favored Democrats, and Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives,” said Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Princeton gerrymandering project. “[But] because of reapportionment and redistricting, those factors would be enough to cause a change in control of the House even if public opinion were not to change at all.” While redistricting gives politicians in some states the opportunity to redraw political boundaries, reapportionment means there are more districts to play with. After each US census, each of the 50 states is awarded a new share of the 435 House seats.

The threat of extreme gerrymandering is more acute today than it has ever been. Owing to population growth, Republican states including Texas, Florida and North Carolina are expected to gain seats before 2022, although the breakdown has not been finalized, with the 2020 census delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Republican-controlled legislatures will have the power to wedge the new districts almost wherever they see fit, with a freedom they would not have enjoyed only 10 years ago, owing to a pair of controversial supreme court rulings. The new Republican gerrymandering efforts are expected to focus on urban areas in southern states that are home to a disproportionate number of voters of color – meaning those voters are more likely to be disenfranchised. Republicans could also seek to repay voters of colors in Atlanta who boosted Biden to victory and drove the defeat of two Republican senators in special elections in Georgia in January, by cracking and packing those voters into new districts. Republicans could net pick up one seat by rearranging the lines around Black people and other Democrats in the Atlanta area. We have to stop gerrymandering, or there will be no representative democracy in America, period – only preordained and symbolic election results.

The conservative Supreme Court knee-capped democracy in America via these rulings.....

• Allowed corporations to be viewed as people and thus able to donate to political elections.

• Gutted the provision of the 1964 Voting Rights Act in which the SCOTUS had to review new voting laws from traditional Jim Crow states.

• Allowed the unfettered gerrymandering of states with macabre districts that not even an abstract painter could conjure up.

The proposed "For the People Act" (H.B.1/S.1) would fix many of these problems which is why the GOP will fight it tooth and nail.