Are you frustrated with the political environment we see not only in Georgia but in Washington, D.C?
Looking at the entrenched partisanship and gridlock in our
political system, it's easy to become cynical. Year after year, it seems
nothing changes. That's because your votes don't really count. One of the reasons is simple: GERRYMANDERING
.
Gerrymandering has effectively disenfranchised the majority of
voters - and they don't even know it.
Districts are noncompetitive, so
the winners are determined in primary elections, where the turnout is
always low (typically about a third of registered voters) and the
electorate is dominated by the most extreme and partisan voters.
Legislators can only be defeated in the primary and so must become
rigidly ideological, since any compromise can (and has) cost members
their careers. That has led to legislatures as well as Congress incapable of solving
problems.
With the SCOTUS decision to drop section 4 of the VRA, which was a huge mistake, what really needs to be looked at now is the total elimination of Gerrymandering.
In this redistricting process, gerrymandering – the manipulation of
district lines for political advantage – has become the political weapon of
choice. The two main purposes of gerrymandering are to protect the seats of
incumbents and to allow the dominant party in a state to win more seats that it
deserves.
A typical example of gerrymandering would be to draw district lines to
keep a city with a large African American population out of a white
Republican’s congressional district. The politicos would do this because
African Americans are more likely to vote Democrat. In exchange for
this the Republicans let the Democrats exclude white rural areas likely
to vote Republican from their districts.
The result of this gerrymandering is that our politics get artificially
polarized along ideological, cultural and racial lines. Republicans can
safely ignore the concerns of African American voters because they know
they won’t be a factor in their reelection. Democrats can safely ignore
the concerns of rural and suburban whites because they know those people
don’t vote in their districts. Instead of a healthy two party contest, elections become nasty little
battles between different factions of one party. In many cases narrow
ideologically focused bands of extremists can dominate the electoral
process. Candidates have to pander to these groups rather than address
issues of real concern to voters.
Eliminating gerrymandering for
Congressional & Legislative districts could make our politics more moderate. When
elections are held in predetermined geographic regions not drawn up by
politicians, American voters tend to elect moderate middle of the road
candidates dedicated to compromise. When politicians have to face
election outside predetermined regions they tend to move the center. History also proves that candidates will abandon polarizing racial,
cultural and ideological politics when their re-election depends on those
of another race or culture. Getting rid of gerrymandering wouldn’t be a cure all but it could go a
long way to improving our political system. In particular it could give
us a House of Representatives that actually looks something like the
America it represents.
