After the extraordinary scene of Texas Democrats fleeing their state to forestall a rare mid-decade gerrymander, Texas Republicans nevertheless moved this week to approve a new congressional map. It is designed to give their party five additional seats in Congress in next year’s midterm elections, as requested by President Trump.
California Democrats responded this week by rushing to advance their own plan to draw a new congressional map to counter Texas Republicans. Red and Blue states across the country are now predictably threatening to join this bare-knuckle political brawl.
Although partisan gerrymandering has sadly become a routine practice pushing us further into tribalism and dysfunction, the current crisis should be seen for what it is: a flashing red warning light for our democracy.
Indeed, if this race to the bottom continues, every aspect of our democratic system of governance could be captured by extreme partisanship, and every last vestige of trust necessary for that system to work could soon be lost. At that point, it may well be too late to change course.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) has proposed the best way out of the current standoff: a federal bipartisan embrace of independent commissions to draw electoral maps so that voters can choose their politicians rather than self-interested politicians cynically rigging the system to their partisan advantage.
That would solve the immediate crisis, but we must also confront the larger issue of extremism dominating our politics.
The truth is our democratic system has been completely hijacked to yield outsized power to the partisan fringes. These voters on the far left and right of the political mainstream view politics as an existential tribal struggle that must be won at all costs, and they thus demand that their elected officials engage in tribal warfare and scorched-earth politics.
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3 comments:
in the Supreme Court’s haste to prove that the election of a black president meant racism was over and our civil rights laws No longer necessary, they only approved partisan gerrymandering as non-discriminatory and then demurred from being able to tell the difference between a legal and illegal gerrymander.
The problem begins with the idea that partisan gerrymandering is legal. The irony is that it started out as a local scheme in Massachusetts in 1812 to benefit Governor Gerry's party, but now Trump has gone & nationalized it. John is right when he says that our democratic system is now completely hijacked.
Ranked choice voting together with electoral fusion is the way for all voters in a state to have their voice heard, not mediated through only the two party system and its primaries, and without penalizing significant minority but geographically dispersed populations.
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