American Democracy:

More Fragile Than We Think

Part Seven of a Nine-Part Series About the Evils of Gerrymandering
by David Brin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2006, by David Brin.
All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

Reprise: If there is to be any hope, we must be the ones to take responsibility.

This is one problem we are going to have to solve ourselves.

I mean it. There is no political party that will help us to slay the dragon of gerrymandering. No billionaire is going to come to the rescue with a foundation grant. And do not expect Bigtime Journalism to raise this as a cause celebre.

The parties may not be equal -- morally or in policy -- but they do share blame for this problem. A billionaire will invest where the chances of success are better than nil.

And the press? Their contempt for the public has no bottom. (I come from a long line of journalists.) They will look at the sheer complexity of this issue and despair of ever explaining it to all those dolts out there.

So, is there any hope, short of believing that science will someday come to the rescue with brain pills?

SOLUTION #1: THE UTOPIAN HOPE FOR ACTION AT THE TOP.

Supposing that the courts do act... or by some miracle our legislators take action against gerrymandering... how should it be done?

Whenever people talk about eliminating gerrymandering, the kneejerk, reflex "reform" appears always to be the same -- hand the job of redistricting to some "impartial commission", often comprisedof retired judges, perhaps guided by some general rule that they must try to follow urban boundaries or perhaps minimize the ratio of district perimeter to area (in order to reduce contorted boundaries).

This notion has advantages, and it would be welcome if done in an equitable manner, encompassing red and blue states all at once. Still, I want to speak up about some disadvantages that probably won't be raised elsewhere.

For one thing, this method is easily satirized by opponents who call it an attempt to create a great big bureaucracy, an unaccountable layer between the people and an important act of sovereign will. This argument was used by opponents to ant-gerrymandering initiatives, on the 2005 ballot in Ohio and California.

Also, the members of such commissions can be subject to all sorts of under the table suasion. Indeed, the members will almost certainly be partisan, in their own right. That's a foregone conclusion.

Moreover, there is something else inherently wrong with the way districts are drawn, and this has little to do with gerrymandering, per se. (Though gerrymandering makes it far worse.)

I find it objectionable that state assembly, state senate, and US representative districts are often aligned to be similar, bunching together the same neighborhoods in voting for three different chambers. This may seem convenient, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong... in that it betrays the dynamic of true democracy. The notion that we should constantly be in a process of creative negotiation with our neighbors -- all of our neighbors.

Think. Suppose you live in a suburb, maybe one that can be called upper middle class. Most likely, all of the upper middle class suburbs around you are gerrymandered into the same assembly district. Congressional and state senate districts are a bit larger, but that mostly draws in some edge zones from the nearby college... and a bit of the poorer area to the west. It won't make much difference, though. Us suburban voters outnumber "those people" so forget em. We elect delegates to represent the majority. Which means us.

All right, this can happen even if the districts are drawn fairly. And it is not horrifically unjust by itself. Majority rule is supposed to balance out across the land.

But what is lazy and awful is when all three legislature districts are so similar that the same political logic will hold in all three, making your assemblyman, state senator and representative cookie-cutter clones of each other.

Consider this alternative method of reforming gerrymandering. One that would make it completely unnecessary to have "impartial redistricting commissions" at all! In fact, the reform law could be written in a single sentence. Moreover, it would have other good effects.

Simply require that all of a state's assembly, congressional and state senate districts shall be drawn to minimize overlap!

All right, ponder that a little. What would it mean? For one thing, it allows one chamber -- say the state assembly -- to still be gerrymandered by the professional politicians to their hearts content. Oh, let the politicos have their way, once. Nevertheless, because of this one-sentence requirement, the power of gerrymandering will be almost completely eliminated in the other two chambers! If one chamber is elected from districts that are contorted to create partisan super-majorities, it is almost certain that the same trick won't work for the other chambers, providing that district overlap truly is minimized.

Again, note that this reform takes just one sentence! No need for complex formulas or intricate redistricting commissions at all! Just this simple rule would banish the worst aspects of the gerrymandering crime. People would get back their vote-effectiveness in at least two chambers. Say in the state senate and Congress. That's good enough for me. How about you?

Now add one more advantage to this approach. You and your neighbors would no longer get to be lazy about voting for legislative representatives. Yes, your local assembly person may be "safe" for your party -- perhaps dedicated solely to the interests of upper-middle class suburbanites, shrugging off those voters at the fringe...

... but this will not be the case for your state senator, whose district includes an entirely different mix of neighborhoods. That representative will have to operate under different assumptions, and so will you! Both you and your immediate neighbors will have to raise your heads and look more often "across the tracks" at people who are different. Maybe you'll want to do a little talking, negotiating, dickering, even trying just a tad harder to understand each other. If only because your State Senator desperately wants some talk and understanding, for his or her own political survival!

Because the whole web of compromises that make up the state assembly will be different than those comprising the state senate. Where the dynamic in gerrymandered districts will always tend toward partisanship and radicalization, these anti-gerrymandered districts will select for moderation -- for politicians who want us talking to each other again.

Is that a bad thing?

Solution #2: THE REALISTIC SHORT TERM THING TO DO.

Supposing that the courts and legislators do NOT act against gerrymandering. How shall citizens rebel and take back their votes?

Putting aside utopian dreams, you and I know that the politicians and courts will do nothing about this crime, this treason against our constitutional way of life.

So what can we do right now, pragmatically, to change the balance of power, even in districts that twist and writhe like serpents, so that the same party may contrive to dominate utterly and apparently forever?

Sometimes, you must seek inspiration in the most unlikely of places.

Go back in time -- sixty years, seventy, eighty -- to the old post-bellum South. Yes, that time of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, when segregation reigned and the Klan ruled the night. Certainly the land of Faulkner wasn't all dismal stereotypes. A lot of good and noble things were also going on. But politically it was not the most open and enlightened era.

For one thing, a majority of white voters would vote for a "yellow dog" if it were the Democratic nominee.

If Republicans dominated the Union at large, from the Civil War until FDR, their monopoly on power was nothing compared to the Democratic Party's lock in the old "Solid South" from Reconstruction until Richard Nixon. In those days, the November election was generally a sham, a mere formality. A coronation of the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be.

A few black citizens who managed to get registered to vote would join some urban intellectuals in casting a smatter of futile, dissenting ballots in the fall. Most did not even bother.

Real political fights were reserved for the primaries, when there were sometimes knock down, drag-out battles among candidates for the democratic nomination -- from governor all the way down to mayor or dog catcher.

Often local blacks or liberals would seek (when allowed) to re-register as Democrats, so they could vote in the spring, when and where it really counted. When political power was actually apportioned.

Can you see where I am heading with this? Gradually, almost unnoticed, we have been manipulated into becoming a nation of ten thousand little Solid Souths, in almost every state assembly and US Congressional district across the land.

Gerrymandering has done to nearly all of America what Jim Crow achieved much earlier, from Texas to the Carolinas.

Sure enough, the problem has been seen before. But the past may also tell us what to do about it.

Thwarted at having anything meaningful to do with their votes, might people find a way to evade this trick of the political pros? The precedent is clear. We have only to follow the wisdom of our ancestors. If we have the guts to rebel against 'party identity' and instead maximize our personal access to political power.

Think of it this way. Gerrymandering has given each district a de facto -- if not official -- one-party state within each district. There is no sense whining about it.

If districts have been scornfully reworked in order to make the November general elections worthless, then by all means, everyone in a district should join the party of that district.

Make the primary election the locus of real argument, real campaigning over issues, real voter participation. Real politics.

Clearly, this is the minority's best tactic, when gerrymandered "solid" districts and national division have rendered competitive politics a thing of the past.

Next... how would this work?