With the Supreme Court's solid ruling in Louisiana v Calais et al., next up, I say, is partisan gerrymandering, gerrymandering by political party. That gerrymandering, decades of court rulings notwithstanding, is just as unconstitutional as racial gerrymandering. While Alito centered the Calais ruling on the 15th Amendment, both forms of gerrymandering--all such forms, come to that--treat one group of American citizen voters entirely differently from and at the direct expense of all other groups of American voters in direct violation of the 14th Amendment.
As a man almost said not so long ago, "There's not a liberal American voter and a conservative American voter. There's the United States of America voter. There's not a black American voter and white American voter and Latino American voter and Asian American voter; there's the United States of America voter."
Full stop.
Eric Hines
Well, he did say something like that, yes. But we have learned to count the silver when people talk like that. It should be inspiring, but is more likely worrisome.
ReplyDeleteI think AVI is right. I distrust politicians who speak in an easy manner about high principles. I'd like to see some evidence that they live their principles first. Some few of them try; mostly they use them as an excuse for seeking yet more power and manipulation.
DeleteI am literally old enough to remember when people talked about Democrat control of the House likely being permanent, just before the GOP went from a one hundred seat deficit and the smallest caucus since the 1930s to a twelve seat majority in two election cycles, and control of the House started oscillating as it had prior to that long period of Democrat control. I think the USSC has rightly concluded the Constitutional requirement for geographically defined districts combined with demographics and population distribution gives no way for courts to objectively determine if any given distribution of Congressional districts is politically neutral. Just as the VRA and Constitution do not require voters of a specific demographic be represented by a Congressperson of a similar demographic, there is no Constitutional requirement that anyone be specifically represented by a Congressperson of their political alignment. I'm pretty sure the endless litigation that would result from an attempt to implement such a requirement would make the current redistricting brouhaha look quite tame. I'm not arguing that it is right or responsible but the solution is going to have to be reached by responsible compromise rather than trying to find a neutral arbiter.
ReplyDeleteWe built into the Constitution a system that distinguishes different groups of voters, on the assumption that different regions would have different interests and needed to be able to express them. It isn't explicitly rural vs urban, though that correlates somewhat with differences—and rural and urban citizens' interests do diverge. (Plus, of course, political corruption is more efficient and powerful in urban areas; there are deep risks to letting urban areas dominate politics.)
ReplyDeleteThe Indians were a different category, as nations in their own right distinct from the USA.
The principle seems to be that there are intrinsic and probably permanent differences between populations' legitimate interests. If we apply that to populations with different ancestries we enshrine ethnic conflict in addition to the obvious economic conflicts.
Do we want to enshrine the claim that it should make a difference where your ancestors used to come from, as opposed to where you and yours are now? That seems too close to the idea of inheritable titles of nobility for comfort: special ancestry that makes you permanently superior or inferior to others.
Different religions have different interests also. Applying something like the millet system to different religions seems fraught too. Corner cases and conversions require adjudication from outside the millet, and that sets the government as supreme over religion.
When the Constitution was adopted we didn't have political parties, per se, and I don't see any justification for including them in gerrymandering schemes.
ReplyDeleteMy own view on (re)districting centers on dividing each State into squares of substantially equal populations (beginning with the corners of the four interior-most districts on the State's geographic center, deviating from that as required for States with only three, or two, Representatives), with the straight line boundaries deviating from straight only at a State's boundary with an adjoining State.
ReplyDeleteThis is not an entirely neutral setup; it unavoidably favors urban areas over rural. That, though, I think is mitigated sufficiently by population mobility, with folks able to leave the city for the suburbs or outer burbs, as already may be starting to happen, or for other States. In any event, though, our Founders and Constitution authors distinguished among the different imperatives of the States; they didn't concern themselves with the differences among any State's subdivisions.
Such a nearly blind district setup also acknowledges the fact that today's populations are much more capable of such relocations, regard less of race or religion or... than Justice Kagan's shrilly racist dissent in which she assumed two things: one is that blacks remain stuck where they are and so desperately need special voting treatment. The other is that she disgustingly insults blacks and other minorities that she claims to want to protect with her assumption that these folks are wholly incapable of competing on their own. Her dissent could have been written by Woodrow Wilson with his insistence that blacks should be grateful for the protections of segregation.
Eric Hines
As you point out, that gives urban voters more weight (started with Baker v. Carr in Tennessee). The problem is when you get something like Aust-onio or parts of CA that can then determine what happens to the entire rest of the state. I do not care to have Houston and Austin deciding about my water, for example.
DeleteI agree that gerrymandering in itself is not good. Until we get political opinion and desires more evenly spread across states, I'm not certain there is a better way to balance urban and rural ideas about certain things (water, property use, other topics.)
LittleRed1
...something like Aust-onio or parts of CA....
ReplyDeleteAust-onio is getting increasingly offset, though, by the Dallas-Ft Worth Metroplex steadily moving from pink-ish purple toward Red. I think (hope?) the last State Representative election there was an aberration.
On the other hand, California is mild compared with Washington, where the narrow strip between the mountains and the Coast Range simply ignore the other 80% of the State in their reign. The upside of that, though, is it's a short hop for most of those 80% to Idaho, which is both concentrating the Left in Washington and reducing that State's representation in the House relative to Idaho, et al. Gerrymandering by shanks mare can work well enough.
Eric Hines
Idaho has some nice country, too. My mother and sister live in the Big Hole, between those mountains and the Tetons.
DeleteI rather wish partisan gerrymandering were unconstitutional, but why do you think it is? Not everything that's terrible policy, sadly, is unconstitutional. We may have to fix it by legislation.
ReplyDelete14th Amendment, Art I:
DeleteNo State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Partisan gerrymandering treats some persons--some American voters--favorably at the direct expense of other American voters--solely on the basis of political party membership. The votes of minority party members and members of no particular party don't have the same value as the votes of the majority party members.
That's unequal protection of the laws. That unequality was the stated purpose of racial gerrymandering, and it's the stated purpose of partisan gerrymandering: to elevate one person's vote over the value of another person's vote explicitly to give members of the correct group a better chance at representation than members of the wrong groups. That Alito chose to rule more narrowly on the basis of the 15th Amendment has no bearing on the broader question of partisan vote favoring.
That this partisan unequal protection has been upheld by decades of court decisions only demonstrates how long the error has existed, and this one wouldn't be the first error to be overturned only after a long interregnum.
Eric Hines