Maryland needs its own solution to gerrymandering

Winston Churchill once said that “history is written by the victors.” Newer versions found in Brian Sanderson’s fantasy novels and a movie about French novelist Colette says it better: history is written by the one with the pen.

History is also written by the ones with pens who draw legislative redistricting lines.

Redistricting – redrawing congressional and state legislative lines – occurs every ten years to address population shifts shown by the U.S. Census. New maps will be presented to the General Assembly in 2022. Gerrymandering redrawing lines for political advantage: to elect more members of a political party or protect political incumbents or both. Either way, your vote matters less.

Maryland has eight congressmen spread across its 23 counties; Anne Arundel County is, in the words of Gov. Larry Hogan, carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey among four districts. We are represented by Dutch Ruppersberger from Baltimore County in the 2nd District, John Sarbanes from Baltimore County in the 3rd District, Anthony Brown from Prince George’s County for the 4th District, and Steny Hoyer from St. Mary’s County in the 5th District.

In short, our decidedly two-party county, Maryland’s fourth most populous, is represented exclusively by Democrats from other jurisdictions. Anne Arundel County is turkey, and Republicans aren’t welcome at the table.

A recent editorial in The Capital lauded

Sarbanes for sponsoring the For the People Act, even though Maryland already enjoys most of the reforms in the bill except redistricting reform (The Capital, March 5). Sarbanes’ district is one of the most gerrymandered districts in the nation. It has been likened to a Rorschach blot, blood spatter on a crime scene, and a brokenwinged pterodactyl.

It is featured first on Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream’s website; “Quiz: Gerrymandered District or Inkblot Test.” It is no accident: Baltimore Sun in October 2012 wrote that Sarbanes wanted Annapolis, despite it being far from his Towson area home with Baltimore City in between, in his district and a February 2019 Washington Post article notes that he wanted the 3rd District pushed westward to include wealthier potential donors.

In a 2012 political debate, Sarbanes supported the gerrymandered map, and has defended it, telling the Washington Post that it was better to get input from a lot of different communities.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Benisek v. Lamone, a case seeking to overturn Maryland’s gerrymandered congressional map, that redistricting reform is a matter left to the states. In Benisek, our legislative leaders openly and appallingly admitted to partisan redistricting, keep incumbents in power and disenfranchising voters for political reasons, and got away with it.

To combat gerrymandering at both the state and congressional levels, I have introduced several bills into the House of Delegates. Hogan has introduced bills aimed at redistricting reform.

Nonetheless, despite the Supreme

Court’s invitation and ample proposed legislation, the Maryland General Assembly has dragged its feet. Other states are adopting independent, partisan-balanced commissions like that proposed by Hogan and are adopting language as I have proposed.

Here in Maryland, such bills have routinely been killed in committee, victims of partisan politics.

In her Benisek dissent, Justice Elena Kagan captures the evils of partisan gerrymandering, that “artificially drawn districts shift influence from swing voters to party-base voters who participate in primaries; make bipartisanship and pragmatic compromise politically difficult or impossible; and drive voters away from an ever more dysfunctional political process .... creating a legislative environment that is both ‘toxic’ and ‘tribal’... Gerrymandering in short helps create the polarized political system that so many Americans loathe.”

I recently wrote to Sarbanes to see if he would support my redistricting reform bill. He sent back a nonresponsive letter thanking me for contacting him, but saying nothing about mine.

Whether that is tribal, toxic, or simply accidental, I don’t know. What I do know is that Maryland, regardless of whether the Federal For the People Act passes, needs to address its own political dysfunction and implement redistricting reform.

We as a state need to take back the pen and write our own history as victors over gerrymandering.