Gerrymander folly
Hey Austin, let the voters pick their own candidates, not the other way around.
One of the mysteries of the ages was resolved in the late 1950s, when biologists confirmed once and for all how legions of ants adhere to precise lines in their quest for food. Renowned biologist E.O. Wilson, building on the work of predecessors, discovered a gland in an ant’s abdomen that secretes a substance called pheromone. The world’s preeminent myrmecologist at last confirmed that the hive follows without deviation the line of pheromone signals that scout ants have lain down.
Texas lawmakers also possess a pheromonic ability. Every 10 years they use new census data and lay down district lines that lead inexorably to their own form of sustenance: the right voters, in the right quantities, who will either keep them in office, lever their opponents out of office, or both. The age-old mystery yet to be resolved in Texas is how to get them to home in on the voters’ interests, not their own, when they draw boundary lines for the state’s congressional, legislative and State Board of Education offices.
In other words, how can we insist that they draw lines that allow voters to choose their representatives rather than the other way around?
Texas lawmakers here at the start of a new decade have been preparing to plunge into the complicated but contentious redrawing of maps, but the Trump administration — and COVID 19 — threw a wrench into the U.S. Census count and population figures won’t be ready until July. The legislative session ends on May 31, so Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to call a special session after the numbers are available and before the 2022 midterm elections.
If history is any guide, the process is likely to produce a menagerie of “gerrymanders,” a venerable portmanteau word invented to describe curiously drawn districts vaguely shaped like salamanders to accommodate the elected representative or party in power. With 10-year gaps between redistricting sessions,, gerrymanders, like gophers, are hard to root out. It only got harder in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to join the battle against nakedly partisan gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering matters. When politicians choose their voters through craftily drawn districts, they can safely ignore constituents with contrary views, and the issues they care about. Worried only about potential primary opponents, they tend to run to extremes, left or right. One party or another entrenches its hold on governance, even when it doesn’t reflect the general voting populace. Citizens may — and too often do — conclude their vote is useless.
This year could be even worse than usual in a state where population growth may add three new congressional seats. In every decade since passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, courts have found that Texas lawmakers drew brazenly politically motivated maps. They also drew maps that disenfranchised voters, particularly minorities. Because of its shameless history of voter suppression, Texas was required to seek “preclearance” from the Justice Department before making any redistricting changes. In 2013, though, the U.S. Supreme Court liberated Texas and eight other states — all but one in the South — and scores of counties across the U.S. from those requirements, meaning mapmakers needn’t fret all that much about respecting minority voting rights.
Republicans draw maps benefiting Republicans. Democrats draw maps benefiting Democrats. Software has gotten ever more sophisticated, so politicians who control it — currently, Republicans — are able to move voters around with almost tweezer-like precision.
Lawmakers are about as likely to give up redistricting power as ants are to pass on a glob of pancake syrup. As with ants, it’s a matter of life and (political) death. Voters in 23 states, recognizing that letting the dominate party draw its own district lines is an inherent conflict of interest, have forced the issue. Arizona, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado, California and New York are among those now relying on alternative methods such as independent commissions.
We Texans, meanwhile, live in a state where GOP Chairman Allen West urges Republican lawmakers to “realize this strategic opportunity and not concern themselves with ‘fairness’ to the progressive socialist left.” West, a bloviating hothead, may be saying in crass terms what his fellow partisans are thinking.
Texans’ only hope may be with Congress. House Resolution 1, the so-called For the People Act, would prohibit extreme partisan gerrymandering by, in part, requiring that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions. The bill passed the House in 2019 but has been mired in a GOP-controlled Senate. Its future is brighter now that Georgia elected two Democratic senators.
Absent federal legislation, fair-minded Texans are left to hope that the state’s fast-growing and fluid population thwarts sophisticated software. Whose computer would have predicted a decade ago that suburbs drawn safely red would flip to blue? Or that true-blue Rio Grande Valley communities would trend red?
Last week, the state Senate Redistricting Committee heard public comment in a virtual hearing. For more than two hours, Texans pleaded for fairness.
Their efforts are laudable — and necessary — but concerned Texans can’t rely on party goodwill. Voter-organizing efforts, as in Georgia, also thwart the experts. Whether it’s breaking up a line of pheromone-following ants advancing toward a picnic spread, or stubbing out extreme gerrymandering, participation is key.