#ratfucked

[pscottm]

How did we get all this gerrymandering? A short history of the Republican redistricting scheme

A plan to redistrict states to benefit Republicans was conceived of 15 years ago. It’s been an enormous success

While politicians have gerrymandered since the dawn of the American experiment – even before it got its name from then Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry’s party crafting state senate districts around Boston that looked like salamanders – the modern story really begins in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama and a blue wave that delivered Democrats trifecta power and even a US Senate supermajority.

On television that election night, even the sharpest Republican analysts spoke of unbreakable emerging coalitions and demographic changes that could provide Democrats with majorities for a generation. It didn’t exactly work that way. A handful of savvy Republican strategists recognized that while 2008 may have been historic, 2010 could be much more consequential. It would be a census year. And after every census, the nation redistricts every state legislature and US House seat.

A lightbulb went off at the Republican state leadership committee (RSLC). Executive director Chris Jankowski recognized the opportunity first: target states where the legislature controls redistricting. Pour millions into underfunded state legislative races. Drown Democratic incumbents. Flip as many chambers as possible. Redraw the lines. If Republicans could pull it off, they would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade.

“We should do this,” Jankowski remembered, in an interview for my book Ratf**ked. “I think we can get millions – and you don’t have to do anything other than what you were going to do anyway.”

They called this Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. It transformed the nation.

Karl Rove laid out the plan in a March 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed that laid out the specific small towns in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio where national Republicans would come gunning for small-town Democrats. His message: control redistricting, control Congress. “Republican strategists are focused on 107 seats in 16 states. Winning these seats would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats.”

Polls showed that huge majorities of voters across party lines despised gerrymandering. Reform efforts won in red states and in blue states with big majorities. And in federal courts, judges appointed by presidents of both parties believed that they had all the tools they needed to strike down maps that decimated true political competition, and took aim at the radical outliers drawn by both parties. Reformers and voters had real momentum.

Enter John Roberts.

In 2019, the chief justice – whose antipathy to voting rights has been central to his life’s work ever since he arrived in Washington in 1982 as a young aide in Reagan’s Department of Justice – destroyed hopes that the federal courts would help defend voters and create a national standard.

In a case from North Carolina called Rucho v Common Cause, a 5-4 majority ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a nonjusticiable political issue. The decision, written by Roberts, closed the federal courts to future claims at the precise moment that they’d become the most important part of the solution. After all, politicians have long proven unwilling to reform the very process that elected them and helped entrench them in office. Roberts, however, said the federal courts could no longer be involved, because there was no clear and manageable standard. Multiple federal judges, of course, pointed to multiple clear standards. And even if Roberts didn’t find a standard to his liking, nothing required him to leap to making the issue nonjusticiable.

The decision signed the death warrant for reform. Without the threat of a national, court-enforced standard, states had no reason to behave themselves. In 2021, Democrats – now fully awakened to the problem – claimed seats in Illinois (14 of 17) and Maryland (seven of eight) and took extra seats in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico. Republicans, already enjoying an edge, claimed four in Florida then worked the margins in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia and Utah. According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center, the GOP had a 16-seat advantage this decade thanks to gerrymandering. While some suggested that the national congressional map had become much more balanced, this is misleading: any balance in the national map arrived because many more state maps had been gerrymandered, harming more voters, everywhere.

[girlzoot]

“For me, politics was about understanding people and communicating to them about their issues and problems, and showing that I had a background that would enable me to put solutions together and work with coalitions. But that has nothing to do with politics today, does it? That’s not what government’s about. It’s not about figuring out a way amongst competing divergent interests. How to try and do the right thing. “Now, democracy is one man, one vote. We should just say, you know what, it’s one dollar, one vote. Because that’s really what it is. It’s all about the money. That’s what democracy is in America. It’s the best government money can buy—and money’s bought it. It either rents it, it leases it, or it owns it.” Levdansky reaches into his pocket and pulls out his money clip, waving it so close to my face that I can read all the bills. They are singles. His Mr. Smith outrage builds with such fervor that if this was an email, he’d be typing in capital letters. “I don’t mean this as a partisan Democrat; this is democracy with a little ‘d.’ Is this good, what politics has become—with money being the number one criteria for being elected? It’s not about your individual qualities as a candidate, your ability to communicate, your ability to empathize with ordinary voters, your ability to craft solutions, be a policy wonk, work on compromises. Those skills are practically irrelevant in today’s political world. Even now down to the statehouse floor.” He practically spits that with bitterness, but then his tone softens and saddens. “I mean, I know in Washington, but . . . even now down to the statehouse legislature?” —David Daley/Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count

[girlzoot]

That comes in handy here: these towns and counties are divided with such specificity that Balchunis often finds herself talking with voters who have no idea what district they’re in anymore. She has to tell them to enter their address and zip code into the house.gov website. “Even last night, at a Democratic dinner, I was pulling out my phone doing it for people to show them,” she says. “People have had their front yards in one district and their backyards in another. It’s totally bizarre.” —David Daley/Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count

[girlzoot]

These are not alternative facts. Trump’s margin, after all, came from tight wins across swing states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, and even narrower margins in Pennsylvania (44,292 votes), Wisconsin (22,748) and Michigan (a mere 10,704). Those three states alone provided the decisive 46 electoral votes, meaning that fewer than 80,000 people in three states ultimately installed Trump in the Oval Office despite Clinton’s popular-vote mandate. Those states, of course, all have something else in common: they are among the most gerrymandered in the country, especially in their state legislatures. This was the first presidential election without the protection of the Voting Rights Act, and it showed. In four of those six states, unearned Republican supermajorities—that is, a veto-proof GOP majority in a state where Democrats often earn more aggregate votes—pressed their advantage by enacting onerous new voting restrictions which many legislators baldly admitted were designed to tilt elections their way and dampen Democratic turnout. ---David Daley/Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count

[velociraptorsinpartyhats]

RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy by David Daley is a great book to help understand why we have far right rule in a predominantly center left country. #redistricting #redmap #ratfucked #booksfortherevolution