Posted on by rjonakait

The Texas One-Step

Texas is not normal. This is demonstrated again by its present redistricting efforts. Republicans plan to redraw election boundaries so that Republicans will grab five more seats in Congress. The House delegation from Texas would then be eighty percent instead of the two-thirds it is now. (Trump won fifty-six percent of the vote in 2024.)  Democratic state legislators have two-stepped out of the state to prevent a quorum in the legislature so that it cannot operate. Threats of removal from office and fines have ensued. Even talk of losing parking places is circulating. National politicians have asked that the FBI be used to bring the Dems back to Austin although the legal ground for such federal action is not explained. Texas is not normal.

 The “normal” process is that states only redistrict after each decennial census. This must happen if the number of representatives apportioned to a state has changed because of a population shift. The number of representatives in the House has been capped at 435 since 1929. If one state’s population has grown so that it is entitled to more representation than it had previously, then some other state will have to lose representation, a decision made by Congress after the census. Both of those states will need to draw up new districts.

Even if the number of representatives has remained the same, the state may still need to redistrict because of population shifts within a state. Thus, each state redistricts every ten years after the decennial census. That does not mean, however, that redistricting cannot happen more frequently. Neither the Constitution nor federal law prohibits mid-decade redistricting.

Not all states, however, can easily redistrict mid-decade. While Texas is different (duh) and does not prohibit it, some states do restrict themselves to redistricting only every ten years. Furthermore, some states have tried to remove partisanship from redistricting by ceding districting authority to a nonpartisan commission. Some states have placed the commission mechanism into their state constitutions so that partisan legislatures cannot wipe out such commissions. If these states want to respond to the Texas gerrymander with their own, they first have to amend their state constitutions, and that can take years. For example, in New York a constitutional amendment must be passed by two successive legislatures and then adopted in a statewide vote of the electorate before it goes into effect.

Of course, the Texas goal is not just to redraw district lines. The aim is that more districts will send more Republicans to Congress. Originally gerrymandering was about individuals. Legislative districts were manipulated to have a particular person elected or defeated, but that changed over time to ensure that the member of a particular party, no matter who the individual candidate was, would win the seat. In a successfully gerrymandered district, the election is not about voter turnout, issues, or even personalities. The outcome is set by the district lines that are drawn before the election. The ballots are a mere formality. As a political scientist has said, “In elections, the voters choose the legislators. With gerrymandering, the legislators choose the voters.”

One of the pillars of our government will crumble further as gerrymandering spreads. The House of Representatives, with single-member districts and elections every two years, was the branch of the federal government that was supposed to be most in touch with the people and most responsive to shifts in political winds and fortunes. For example, after the1894 midterms elections, Democratic representation went from 218 in the House to 93. This kind of shift was possible then, but it is unimaginable today because few House seats are truly contestable. The overwhelming majority of seats are “safe.” A political scientist reports that fifty years ago only 25% of House seats were in uncompetitive, gerrymandered districts compared to 60% in 2016. In 2024, reports say that fewer than fifty House spots are not safe. The House as a representation of the people sensitive to changes in the political winds has largely vanished. With gerrymandering, the results are foreordained before an election. If Texas gerrymanders and other states seek to gerrymander to balance Texas, democracy will shrink further.

I see reports of elections from various autocratic countries where the leader gets a ludicrous percentage of the votes, often just short of 100%. The election, of course, is a sham. Meaningless voting means that that country is not a democracy. A gerrymandered district in the United States where the election is meaningless is not part of a democracy either.

We can expect that if Texas gerrymanders mid-decade to deliver more seats for the Republicans, other states will gerrymander further to increase Democratic seats. States that tried to find ways to redistrict in a nonpartisan fashion will feel foolish and try to change their systems. More gerrymandering will ensue. Elections will matter less and less. The House and democracy will further decline.

Just another reason to be depressed.

Posted on by rjonakait

Resurrecting a Modest, Radical Proposal to Make Our Democracy Great Again (MODGA)

I had a good idea. It would not be terribly difficult to do. It would cost almost nothing. It would make our country better. But then I thought more about this good idea. It was not so good. It could make things worse. However, I am not ready to give up my idea completely. There might be a useful germ in it, but I don’t know how to crack the nut open to get it out. Perhaps you can. My idea has to do with the census, voting, and federal aid.

States have an incentive to have every one of its residents counted in the census. The census determines how many Representatives a state will have in the House of Representatives. The greater the population of a state, the greater the number of votes it has in Congress. Both the majority and minority parties in a state have a good reason for everyone to be counted so that the state has as much power in Congress as possible.

The census is also used by the federal government in another way. Various statutes apportion funds states get from the national government by using census numbers. The greater the population in a state, the more federal aid it gets. This, too, gives a state an incentive to have everyone in its borders counted.

In contrast, we all have an incentive to decrease the number of voters. If ten people vote in an election, each holds one-tenth of the electoral power. If, however, only nine people vote, each of those nine voters has a little more power than before. Each voter becomes more influential when others don’t or can’t cast a ballot.

This dynamic is true no matter what the voter’s political persuasion, but the incentives to suppress the votes of those who have different political interests from you is even greater. Perhaps the first rule of politics is that those in power seek to remain in power. One way to do that is to discourage voting by those not in your party. Of course, the Buncombe First party cannot simply prohibit votes for the Buncombe Forever party, but if Buncombe First believes that legislation making it harder to vote will more likely keep Foreverites from voting than Firsters, the Buncombe First party has an incentive to enact such requirements. Of course, such voter suppression makes our country less democratic.

States have an incentive to have all who live there counted, but those who don’t really trust majoritarian rule have an incentive to suppress the votes of some. If they can target voter suppression, they stay in power and don’t lose Representatives or federal funds.

However, I thought, what if we allocated federal moneys not by census numbers but instead by the numbers who voted in each state in the last presidential election? Then states would have an incentive to get out the vote. A state would pay a price for restrictive voter identification laws, insufficient polling places, difficult registration requirements, and the like. The controlling party in a state would have to decide if the loss of federal funds was worth voter suppression measures. For a few moments, I thought allocating federal funds on the number of voters in a state was an idea worth pursuing in order to make the country more democratic.

Then, however, I was struck by an uncomfortable reality. Non-citizens and children, although counted in the census, cannot vote. States with more immigrants and kids would be penalized under my proposal compared to the present methods. If two states each had one million population according to the census, they would now be treated equally under the present allocation formulas, but if State of Fredonia had 100,000 non-citizens while State of Buncombe had only 25,000, Buncombe would have a larger voting base. Even if both states took exactly the same steps to have as many people vote as possible and even if the same percentage of the voting eligible population in each state did vote, Buncombe would get more federal funds than Fredonia. That would not be fair.

With this new insight, I abandoned my modest, radical proposal, but it keeps gnawing at me. There ought to be a way to use the numbers or percentages who vote in each state to allocate federal funds, encouraging the spread of this democracy we claim to love. Aha, I said, “My readers. They have to be smart, creative people or else they would not read this blog (and, of course, they are good looking, too.) Maybe they can find a way to do it.”

So readers, what about it?  If you can think of a way to incentivize the states to make voting easier, more universal, and thereby Make Our Democracy Great Again, let me know. Then I will trademark MODGA and sell appropriate apparel. The prices will be fair, but this being America, a profit for me will be built in. If the clothing becomes as trendy as I expect, perhaps I will be able to retire.