Margaret Renkl | Gerrymandering and Voter Injustice in Nashville – The New York Times

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

“NASHVILLE — When Representative Jim Cooper announced last week that he would be retiring after 32 years in Congress, the 67-year-old did not mince words about his reasons for stepping down: “I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole.”

He was even more direct with WPLN News: “The Republicans could not beat me at the polls, so they have chosen to wreck the Nashville district. And that’s a tragedy not for me but for Nashvillians because soon you’ll have to look for your congressman in Nashville, not in Nashville but in Clarksville or Cookeville or Columbia.”

“All of this is not about me. This is a crisis for Nashville,” Mr. Cooper told The Tennessean. “Gerrymandering is an extinction event for the political life of Nashville.”

That kind of language may sound dramatic, possibly a bit hysterical. In truth, given what has happened to Nashville under the congressional redistricting plan approved by the Tennessee General Assembly last week, it’s restrained.”

Editorial | You’ve Heard About Gerrymandering. What Happens When It Involves Prisons? – The New York Times

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

April 11, 2021

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Credit…Illustration by Nicholas Konrad/The New York Times; photograph by Getty Images

“Where do you live? For most people, that’s an easy question to answer when the census comes around. It’s much harder for those locked up in a state or federal prison, often hundreds or even thousands of miles from the place they last called home.

Longstanding Census Bureau policy is to count people as residing wherever they usually eat and sleep, known as the “usual residence” rule. For prisoners, that means being counted in the legislative districts where they are incarcerated.

But that makes no sense, because virtually everyone who goes to prison comes from somewhere else, and almost all will return there after being released. While they are behind bars, they can’t vote, nor do they have any attachment to the local community or its elected officials. They are counted, even though they can’t hold their representatives accountable.

The result is one of the more persistent and pernicious distortions in the redistricting process, known as “prison gerrymandering.” Now that the 2020 census count is over, and the nation begins its decennial struggle over how to draw new congressional and other legislative district lines — and who gains or loses political power as a result — it’s a good time to talk about how we can get rid of prison gerrymandering at last.” . . .

How Gerrymandering Will Protect Republicans Who Challenged the Election – The New York Times

By Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti

• Jan. 19, 2021

“WASHINGTON — Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio comes from a duck-shaped district that stretches across parts of 14 counties and five media markets and would take nearly three hours to drive end to end.

Designed after the 2010 census by Ohio Republicans intent on keeping Mr. Jordan, then a three-term congressman, safely in office, the district has produced the desired result. He has won each of his last five elections by at least 22 percentage points.

The outlines of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District have left Mr. Jordan, like scores of other congressional and state lawmakers, accountable only to his party’s electorate in Republican primaries. That phenomenon encouraged the Republican Party’s fealty to President Trump as he pushed his baseless claims of election fraud.

That unwavering loyalty was evident on Jan. 6, when Mr. Jordan and 138 other House Republicans voted against certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the presidential election. Their decision, just hours after a violent mob had stormed the Capitol, has repelled many of the party’s corporate benefactors, exposed a fissure with the Senate Republican leadership and tarred an element of the party as insurrectionists.”

Opinion | The Politics We Don’t See Matter as Much as Those We Do – By Thomas B. Edsall – The New York Times

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.

• Aug. 12, 2020
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Republican state Senators Dan Soucek, left, and Brent Jackson, right, review historical maps at the General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C. in 2016.Credit…Corey Lowenstein/The News & Observer, via Associated Press

“Some of the most important developments in politics do not happen every election cycle, but every ten years, when politicians scrap the old battleground map and struggle to replace it with a new one more favorable to their interests.

Steven Hill, a former fellow at New America, described how this works in his still pertinent 2003 book “Fixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics.”

“Beginning in early 2001, a great tragedy occurred in American politics,” Hill wrote. As a result of that tragedy, “most voters had their vote rendered nearly meaningless, almost as if it had been stolen from them” as “hallowed notions such as ‘no taxation without representation’ and ‘one person, one vote’ have been drained of their vitality, reduced to empty slogans.”

Hill was referring to “the process of redistricting” that he argued was legalized “theft” engaged in by “the two major political parties, their incumbents, and their consultants,” which Hill said was “part of the everyday give-and-take (mostly take) of America’s winner-take-all politics.” “

Opinion | A Win for Gerrymandering – by David Leonhardt – The New York Times

“North Carolina suffers from some of the most extreme gerrymandering in the country. Last year, Republicans only narrowly won the statewide popular vote in congressional elections, 50 percent to 48 percent. Yet they ultimately held on to 10 of North Carolina’s 13 congressional seats. Gerrymandering turned a nail-biter into a landslide.

The good news is that, in October, a state court ruled the congressional map to be illegal, thanks to its blatant “partisan intent.” The judges nudged the state legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, to draw districts that would more accurately reflect voters’ intent.

The bad news is that legislators drew another unfair map, albeit less unfair than the original.

The even worse news is that yesterday the same state court allowed the new map to stand. The judges cited the calendar, saying that rejecting the new map would effectively require the 2020 primaries to be delayed.”

Opinion | Ocasio-Cortez Isn’t Spelled C-r-o-w-l-e-y – NYT

“If Mr. Crowley means what he says, his presence on the November ballot is unlikely to have much of an impact since New York’s 14th Congressional District, which covers parts of Queens and the Bronx, is overwhelmingly Democratic. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has also become extremely well known and popular. But the episode is a grating reminder of the brokenness of the state’s election laws.

New York makes it difficult to vote at nearly every turn. It is one of a minority of states in which there is no early voting, despite a broad push by good government groups and others. Residents must register to vote 25 days before every Election Day — that’s compared with seven days ahead in states like Connecticut and same-day voter registration in states like Colorado.

New York also requires voters who want to change parties to do so more than a year before an election. And it maintains a stockpile of outdated voting machines that have been known to break down, gumming up elections. In 2016, New York City’s Board of Elections wrongfully purged at least 117,000 Democratic voters from the rolls. Reforming the City Board of Elections requires changes to state law.

Jerry H. Goldfeder, a well-known election lawyer, said New York’s election laws are “extremely, uniquely peculiar.”

“They need a total revamping to make it easier for voters to understand, for candidates to run and to make sure the winners reflect the preferences of the voters,” Mr. Goldfeder said.

Fixing this will require action from the State Legislature and the governor. If Democrats win control of the State Senate this November, a unified state government should get it done.”

Supreme Court Avoids an Answer on Partisan Gerrymandering – By ADAM LIPTAK – NYT

By Adam Liptak   June 18, 201811

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declined on Monday to decide two challenges to partisan gerrymandering, citing technical grounds.In a case from Wisconsin, the court said plaintiffs there had not proved they had suffered the sort of direct injury to give them standing to sue. The court sent the case back to the lower courts to allow the plaintiffs to try again.In a second case, from Maryland, the court ruled against the challengers in an unsigned opinion.

The decisions were a setback for critics of partisan gerrymandering, who had hoped that the Supreme Court would decide the cases on their merits and rule in their favor, transforming American democracy by subjecting to close judicial scrutiny oddly shaped districts that amplify one party’s political power.”

I have an unhappy face.

Supreme Court Won’t Block New Pennsylvania Voting Maps – The New York Times

“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a second emergency application from Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania seeking to overturn decisions from that state’s highest court, which had ruled that Pennsylvania’s congressional map had been warped by partisan gerrymandering and then imposed one of its own.

The ruling means a new map drawn by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will very likely be in effect in this year’s elections, setting the stage for possible gains by Democrats. Under the current map, Republicans hold 12 seats while Democrats hold five and are expected to pick up another when the result of a special election last week is certified.The latest application was denied by the full Supreme Court without comment or noted dissents.”

David Lindsay: The resistance to GOP Trumptopia just got a boost from the Supreme Court! Thank you for calling one for democracy. Pennsylvania districts will be un-gerrymandered

Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges. – The New York Times

“WASHINGTON — In Pennsylvania, a Republican lawmaker unhappy with a State Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering wants to impeach the Democratic justices who authored it.

In Iowa, a running dispute over allowing firearms in courthouses has prompted bills by Republican sponsors to slash judges’ pay and require them to personally pay rent for courtrooms that are gun-free.

In North Carolina, the Republican Party is working on sweeping changes to rein in state courts that have repeatedly undercut or blocked laws passed by the legislature.

Rather than simply fighting judicial rulings, elected officials in some states across the country — largely Republicans, but Democrats as well — are increasingly seeking to punish or restrain judges who hand down unfavorable decisions, accusing them of making law instead of interpreting it.

Civil liberties advocates and other critics have a different take: The real law-flouting, they say, is by politicians who want to punish justices whose decisions offend their own ideological leanings.”

DL: This is how democracies slide into facist dictatorships.

Two Ways of Looking at Gerrymandering – by Linda Greenhouse – NYT

“Even though Doug Jones won a famous statewide victory in last month’s Alabama Senate race, he actually lost — less famously — to Roy Moore in six of the state’s seven congressional districts. That’s right: He carried only the heavily black Seventh Congressional District, into which the Alabama Legislature has jammed almost a third of the state’s African-American population while making sure that the rest of the districts remain safely white and Republican.

That’s gerrymandering in the raw. Something equally raw, although less overtly racial, happened in Maryland back in 2011, when the overwhelmingly Democratic State Legislature decided that one Republican out of Maryland’s eight-member congressional delegation was one Republican too many. The 2010 census required the state to shrink the majority-Republican Sixth District by 10,000 people in order to restore one-person, one-vote equality among the districts. Seeing its opportunity for some major new line-drawing, the Legislature conducted a population transfer. It moved 66,417 Republican voters out of the district while moving into it 24,460 Democratic voters from safely Democratic adjoining districts, a swing of more than 90,000 votes. And guess what? The 20-year Republican incumbent, Roscoe Bartlett, lost the 2012 election to the Democratic candidate, John Delaney, who has won re-election ever since.”

Yes. Here is the top comment I endorsed:

Brad

is a trusted commenter San Diego County, California 5 hours ago

Every time I read about the problem of gerrymandering and how districts are drawn to favor one party or another I keep thinking about conversations with Europeans about how they deal with gerrymandering.

One approach is not to have small electoral districts but rather have multiple seats open in a single state. A parliamentary style election in which party has a list of candidates allows proportional representation. If 40% of voters vote for a Republican, 35% for a Democrat, 15% for Libertarians and 10% for the Greens, those percentages determine the allocation of seats.

Alternatively is to have non-partisan “boundary commissions” as they are called in Great Britain. A similar approach is used in California and Arizona.

Gerrymandering – combined with corporate funding of candidates – has corroded American political system.

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