“It is hypocritical to say that it is abhorrent to tactically shift voters based on race, but not to do so based on party affiliation”
Democrats only have so many gerrymandering options because they’ve mostly gerrymandered their states to the max. One example is Maryland, where there were enough voters to elect a Republican governor, but which is already so heavily gerrymandered that there’s only one Republican congressman out of eight.
And now they’re trying to get rid of him.
Lunatic House Majority Leader David Moon is on board. So is Gov. Wes Moore. But Senate President Bill Ferguson is trying to be the voice of sanity, and explaining to the howling ‘resistance’ mob why trying to eliminate the one GOP congressman is a bad idea on all fronts.
Ferguson noted that the state is a third Republican and the current Congressional map already disenfranchises most of them (1 out of 8 is a long way from a third) and hasn’t even been reviewed by the courts. Which is a good thing because gerrymandering is actually illegal under Maryland’s Constitution and bill of rights. If they go ahead and try to unrepresent 34% of the state, the courts can get involved and roll back their gerrymandering further.
Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution states that “each legislative district shall consist of adjoining territory, be compact in form, and of substantially equal population. Due regard shall be given to natural boundaries and the boundaries of political subdivisions ”
If we had to modify the federal constitution, this doesn’t sound like such a bad addition.
More to the point, gerrymandering is literally illegal and is being flouted. In past lawsuits, it was also noted that Article 7 of the Declaration of Rights states that “the right of the People to participate in the Legislature is the best security of liberty and the foundation of all free Government; for this purpose, elections ought to be free and frequent; and every citizen having the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution, ought to have the right of suffrage.”
So, a literal attack on democracy. And it’s enough of a basis for sending much of Maryland’s existing gerrymandered congressional map rolling into oblivion if it gets into a courtroom.
Then Ferguson states two things that are more provocative. One that gerrymandering is a MAD race that Republicans are more likely to win.
As several national news outlets have noted, many states face limitations on their ability to engage in mid-cycle redistricting, either due to the absence of a supermajority in both legislative chambers and executive control, or a lack of available seats to flip. But for those states that are categorized as able to redistrict, Republican states are able to possibly redistrict 20 more seats to be Republican congressional seats than Democratic states: “Republican state legislative majorities oversee 55 Democratic congressional seats while Democratic state legislative majorities oversee only 35 Republican districts”
I have spoken with my counterparts in other states. One theme has echoed throughout all these conversations that I do not think is being captured in national discussions regarding redistricting – several Republican states are resisting pressure to redistrict and are mostly able to do so because Maryland and other Democratic states are not redistricting either. In short – if Maryland redistricts, Republican-led states that were not planning to do so, will. That means that Maryland’s potential gain of one seat is immediately eliminated, and, in fact, worsens the national outlook.
And then Ferguson really set off a bomb by writing that…”It is hypocritical to say that it is abhorrent to tactically shift voters based on race, but not to do so based on party affiliation”
You can imagine how that one went over.
Ferguson is obviously right on all points, but much of his party and its increasingly lunatic base wants a fight, not an explanation of why they can’t just ban the political opposition. And Ferguson’s thought about racial and political gerrymandering really rubs them the wrong way.
State Sen. Clarence Lam complained, “He’s saying that he feels like this would be the equivalent of racial gerrymandering, that if we did this. That seems very ironic and rich, given that the Supreme Court is about to kill section two of the [Voting Rights Act]. He’s basically making the argument that the Republicans on the Supreme Court are making.”
I don’t think Lam knows the definition of ‘ironic’, but never mind that.
But what’s the fundamental difference between depriving millions of people of suffrage based on their beliefs or based on their race? One is obviously bigoted while the other cynical, but racial gerrymandering hasn’t been about bigotry in a long time. It’s about using race as a proxy for political gerrymandering. Segregation is long dead. Nobody is really expanding or shrinking minority districts because they hate or love black people or any other group and want to give them or deprive them of rights, but because it builds or shrinks their political power. Racial gerrymandering is political gerrymandering and everyone knows this. And these days it’s wrong for the same reasons.
