Fair redistricting should be bipartisan cause

Eric Holder, former U.S. attorney general, is determined to get 2020 Democratic contenders to commit to an issue that foretells the fate of many of the big policies they advocate — and the chances of accomplishing anything if elected. The issue? A fair redistricting process.

While California voters passed reforms that put the drawing of district boundaries for the Legislature (Prop. 11, 2008) and U.S. Congress (Prop. 20, 2010) in citizen commissions, politicians retain the power to set those lines in much of the nation. Republicans have been particularly aggressive in configuring districts for partisan advantage, a process known as “gerrymandering,” after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 approved a freakishly shaped district to disrupt a Federalist stronghold.

The term stuck through two centuries. So has the practice.

“Gerrymandering is simply wrong. Full stop,” Holder said in a phone interview Friday. “We have to get to a place where we are empowering the people and taking power away from the politicians.”

So far, 13 of 24 Democratic candidates have signed Holder’s pledge to end gerrymandering. Sen. Kamala Harris, DCalif., and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, have taken the stand. Notably absent from the list are the party’s current frontrunners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Holder is pressing the Democratic candidates for two reasons. One, they can use their platforms on the national stage to command “the attention of the American people” to the issue. The other is pragmatic.

“The reality is, if we don’t have fair redistricting in the next decade, no matter

who we nominate and who’s elected ... he or she will be potentially hobbled by a gerrymandered House of Representatives that could block his or her agenda,” Holder said.

The results of recent elections underscore the effects of GOP gerrymandering. It was not by chance that Republicans won less than half of all votes cast nationwide for the House of Representatives in 2016 yet emerged with a 33-vote advantage.

Even though the Democrats regained control of the House in the 2018 midterms, a recent Associated Press analysis found that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats than would have been expected based on their average share of the vote — and as many as seven legislative chambers would have flipped from red to blue without the GOP’s structural advantage.

The stacking the odds in one party’s Eric Holder, former U.S. attorney general in the Obama administration favor skews the outcome of policy, and often promotes the type of gridlock we see in Washington.

“If you care about Medicaid expansion, if you care about reproductive rights, if you care about gun safety, if you care about protection of voting rights, if you care about criminal justice reform ... those are all things that are directly connected to having a fair redistricting process,” Holder said.

Back in the day, the ruling Democrats were among the harshest critics of redistricting reforms in California. The argument I heard, time and again, from Democrats was: Republicans aren’t playing fair in other states. Why should we? Their suspicions were compounded by the collaboration of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with nonpartisan good-government groups such as the League of Women Voters and California Forward.

It turned out that fair redistricting did not disadvantage Democrats. In fact, they prospered. In 2008, Republicans held 19 of the state’s 53 seats in Congress; after last year’s midterms, the GOP held just seven seats. Demographic shifts and voter preferences — not politicians drawing boundaries for partisan advantage or to protect one another from competition — guided the outcome. And properly so.

The promising news is that American voters are showing that they grasp the importance of what was once regarded as an arcane issue of interest mostly to think tanks, editorial writers and goodgovernment groups. Last year, redistricting reform measures were passed by voters in Michigan, Missouri, Colorado and Utah.

Schwarzenegger remains an ardent champion of redistricting reform from the perch of his institute at the University of Southern California. But he is gaining plenty of company, including from prominent Democrats, and none more so than former President Barack Obama.

The 44th president has cast the issue in very practical terms.

“The single most important thing that could be done at the grassroots level over the next few years is to make sure the rules of the road are fair,” Obama told supporters in a conference call last year. “If we do that, I think we’ll do the right thing.”

One of the challenges is that citizens in some of the gerrymandering states do not have the constitutional authority to take redistricting away from legislatures.

Holder acknowledged that it will be difficult to persuade many Republicans to cede their ability to control the process because “certainly in the short term this is going to mean they’re probably going to lose power.” But preserving power in defiance of voter will is the antithesis of democracy.

“But it would also mean,” added Holder, “that maybe their party would shift their policy positions and get to a place where they could be more competitive.”

As the saying goes, elections have consequences. If they’re fair, the consequence reflects the will of the voters.

“Gerrymandering is simply wrong. Full stop. We have to get to a place where we are empowering the people and taking power away from the politicians.”

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron Twitter: @JohnDiazChron