Importance of nonpartisan congress, considering extremist election

While gerrymandering works for both parties, in recent years it’s worked unequivocally more for the republican party.

The house and the senate are supposed to be the bi-partisan powers that can balance the executive branch. We were supposed to have checks and balances instituted by the constitution.

However, today, per AP News, Nov 14 2024, Republicans have won 218 house seats giving Donald Trump and his body legislative control. To the bare eye, this might seemed like a consequences of bad odds for the democrats, however, let’s examine how gerrymandering was utilized to orchestrate this outcome.

Republicans spent much of 2021 and 2022 enacting new maps to give themselves an electoral advantage, and 2023’s midterms were the first elections held under these new district lines. It’s completely possible that Republicans only won the House thanks to gerrymandered maps in the following states -and a few helpful boosts from the courts.

ALABAMA

In 2021, Alabama Republicans, who controlled all the levers of redistricting power in the state, passed a new map featuring just one majority-Black district despite Black Alabamians being almost 27% of the population. Given the racially polarized voting in the state, the new map meant that Democrats would likely win only that one congressional district.

Voters sued the new map, arguing that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) required the state to draw another majority-Black district, one that would also likely elect a Democrat to Congress. A federal three-judge panel agreed, finding that the VRA requires Alabama to draw a second majority-Black district. The court then blocked Alabama from using the map in this year’s elections and ordered the state to draw a new map with a second Black-majority district. However, the US Supreme Court ultimately BLOCKED this decision, at the request of Alabamas republican politicians.

The outcome? One less democratic seat in the state.

FLORIDA

In the end of 2021 when politicians began considering new map proposals, republicans all agreed to maintain the 5th district which was designed for the voice of black Floridians. However, a republican senator unraveled this plan when he introduced his own map which fragmented the 5th district, lessening the Black American voice with this racial gerrymander.

This plan led to a lawsuit in state court challenging the map for violating the Florida Constitution’s Fair Districts Amendment. In May, a trial court judge temporarily blocked the new configuration of the 5th Congressional District, finding that the map violated the Fair Districts Amendment. The judge then ordered the map to be replaced with a different map that preserved a Black-performing version 5th Congressional District.

Unfortunately, a Florida appellate court ended up pausing that decision. As a result, the plan was used in the midterm elections, losing the re-election of Democratic Representative Lawson due to the dismantling of the 5th Congressional District.

This led to one less Democrat representing Florida in the next Congress.

UTAH

Introduction

11/05/24

Every member of the US House of Representatives, state legislators, and local legislators are elected from districts. However, today, this process, has diverted from representing the people and instead has been manipulated for political strategy

This happens through a process called Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering ” is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. ” Legislators can use different methods to manipulate the votes

Cracking: spreading voters of a certain demographic among various districts in order to reduce that demographic’s influence in an election

Packing: concentrating many voters of one demographic into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts.

Biased redistricting allows politicians to choose voters.

Gerrymandering has long been an issue–Nationally, extreme partisan bias in congressional maps gave Republicans a net 16 to 17 seat advantage for most of last decade. Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania alone — the three states with the worst gerrymanders in the last redistricting cycle — accounted for 7 to 10 extra Republican seats in the House.

But this isn’t strictly a republican issue either; gerrymandering has the ability to empower or tear apart any party. In Maryland, for instance, Democrats used control over map-drawing to eliminate one of the state’s Republican congressional districts.

Regardless of which party is responsible for gerrymandering, it is ultimately the public who loses out. 

In the past, gerrymandered maps could be taken to the Supreme Court to be ruled on there, however, back in 2019, the Supreme Court shut the courthouse door to challenges to partisan gerrymandering under the U.S. Constitution in Rucho v. Common Cause. The Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide clear legal standards for courts to apply in gerrymandering cases, but state courts could fill the legal void. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.”

However, last November, republicans won two seats on the NC Supreme Court, giving it a conservative majority. In February, the court relied on a rarely used procedural rule to rehear the 2022 partisan gerrymandering case Harper v. Hall, and reversed its prior ruling on April 28.

Reversing Harper with a new court majority only around a year after it was settled raises questions about the rule of the law, as courts are becoming more polarized.

Rule of the law: The rule of law is a durable system of laws, institutions, norms, and community commitment that delivers four universal principles-accountability, just law, open government, and accessible and impartial justice. https://worldjusticeproject.org/about-us/overview/what-rule-law

This is an example of the instability gerrymandering produces, and the House capture that results in reversing past rulings. This back and forth only increases overturning.