Lamentations About Redistricting Ending Democracy Prove Hypocritical – and Wrong

Townhall.com ^ | February 11, 2022 | Michael Barone

[Kaslin]

Masks were necessary, especially in schools, to prevent mass deaths. Or so we were told, at great and tedious length -- until suddenly, in the last 10 days, they weren't. The Democratic governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and California followed the lead of the newly installed Republican governor of Virginia and revoked mask mandates. Or until, if I may say so, my Washington Examiner column last week titled "Returning to normalcy on school masks."

Let's pivot now to another subject on which liberal commentators were raising alarms. Getting rid of gerrymandering, they claimed, was necessary to preserve democracy and prevent its overthrow by the forces of repression and one-party dictatorship.

It turns out that those alarms are suddenly, to borrow a Watergate word, inoperative. The turning point may have come last week when David Wasserman, the Cook Political Report's ace redistricting honcho, tweeted that his state-by-state accounting that showed Democrats with a two- to three-seat gain in U.S. House redistricting in the cycle following the 2020 census.

So much for the lamentations, coming from Democrats such as former Attorney General Eric Holder, that Republican redistricting would guarantee one-party control for another decade or even, according to left-wing tweeters, forever. Republicans control legislatures and governorships in states with more House districts than Democrats. But they are failing to make the redistricting gains they did following the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

Why haven't things been panning out that way?

One reason is that Democratic redistricters have been more ruthless than Republicans, starting with Illinois and its early filing deadline on March 14. Democrats drew "bacon-strip" districts heading 100 miles out from Chicago wards to the open prairie and downstate districts that stitch together small factory or university towns along highway rights of way. They increased Democrats' edge from 13-5 to 14-3.

New York Democrats did even better. Their edge went from 19-8 to 22-4, thanks to a plan that linked conservative Staten Island with Brooklyn's trendy Park Slope and gave House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler a district that snakes from the palisades of Upper Manhattan to the beaches of Bensonhurst.

This seems in violation of New York law, but those familiar with how New York courts handle election law, such as Wasserman, have little doubt it will stand. Similarly, the Democratic-majority North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned a Republican redistricting plan based on the court's 2019 criteria on an entirely inconsistent theory. "Heads I win, tails you lose."

In contrast, the Republican-majority Ohio Supreme Court has overturned a partisan Republican map based on similar provisions. Texas Republican legislators concentrated on strengthening Republican incumbents rather than ousting Democrats.

You see similar inconsistency in interpreting the Voting Rights Act. Black politicians and Republican strategists long argued that it required maximizing the number of majority-Black districts, which resulted in electing more Black members and in strengthening Republicans in adjacent districts. Democrats taking that view prevailed in federal court in challenging Alabama's districts, a decision stayed last week pending full review by the Supreme Court.

But in other cases, Democrats have argued that the act requires only a large percentage of Black voters, an arrangement that tends to elect more Democrats. It's possible that the Supreme Court in the Alabama case may clear up the muddle of current Voting Rights Act jurisprudence that has been exploited by both parties.

The creation of purportedly nonpartisan redistricting commissions -- a favorite proposal of those few liberals, like the Washington Post editorialists, who lament partisan redistricting -- doesn't end partisan gerrymanders. Democrats have succeeded in gaming supposedly neutral commissions this cycle in California (52 districts), Michigan (13) and New Jersey (12).

Those who have lamented that partisan redistricting means one-party control do have some historic precedent for their argument. As I documented in successive editions of "The Almanac of American Politics," Democrats' partisan redistricting helped them maintain majorities in the House of Representatives from the Supreme Court's one-person, one-vote decision in 1964 through 1992.

That hasn't worked for Republicans. Starting in 1995, neither party has maintained majorities over a 10-year intercensal period. Political realignments have frustrated even the most ruthless redistricters and may do so again. The waning prominence of Donald Trump may turn some affluent districts who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 Republican again. Or the post-Biden emergence of someone like the 1992 Bill Clinton may turn some populist Trump 2020 districts once again Democratic. Or voters could start splitting their tickets again.

My prediction is that by 2030, masking of schoolchildren will be seen as a vestige of a remote and superstitious past, and that the partisan redistrictings of political parties and "apolitical" commissions alike will have been rendered nugatory by the voters.

[Liz]

The Supreme Court Drops the Hammer on Democrat Redistricting;
Sets up a Coming Death Blow; C/J Roberts Joins the Liberal Side in Dissent
Red State ^ | 02/07/2022 | Bonchie
Posted on 2/7/2022, 11:37:37 PM by SeekAndFind

After several days of bad news on the redistricting front, including a bad decision in North Carolina for the GOP-drawn map there, a big win has been delivered to Republicans. The US Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 to halt a lower court order in Alabama that it must redraw its previously passed Congressional map.

That means a 6-1 Republican to Democrat map will now go into effect in 2022, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, there’s no reason to believe it gets struck down at any point past that.

The SCOTUS stay is obviously a huge win for Republicans and a blow to a coalition of Dems/civil rights groups seeking an additional Black opportunity seat in AL (and LA/SC). The 6R-1D GOP map will stand for 2022, and possibly longer. — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 7, 2022

As one of my RedState colleagues previously speculated, challenging the Alabama map on the grounds of the Voting Rights Act was a total miscalculation for Democrats. They were always an underdog in stopping the GOP map in Alabama, but worse for them, the court has also granted cert to the case, with a full decision likely to come in 2023. That decision is unlikely to be kind to those who want to keep weaponizing the VRA to produce Democrat-stacked maps while not allowing Republicans to gerrymander.

What that means is that not only did Democrats lose in this specific instance, but they could lose a lot more, all across the country in regards to their use of racial quotas for congressional districts once a final decision is delivered.

It doesn’t take a legal genius to see that a court skeptical about the idea of racial quotas (for the Roberts-doubters, I’d point you toward his record on affirmative action and various voting rights grifts as well as his opinions acknowledging that no matter how virtuous the intent, the government can’t make decisions based primarily on race) that has already done away with “pre-clearance” isn’t very far away from saying that unless you can prove that diluting the minority vote was the intent of drawing a district, the state’s version of the map prevails.

The potential irony of this decision is just too much to contemplate. Activist groups suing Alabama over a 30-year-old district map could potentially destroy the racial gerrymandering grift for the entire country.

That’s exactly what appears to be happening, and while Justice John Roberts wussed out as usual in the decision to lift the order, his dissent notes that he believes the only holdup is that the court needs to tear apart past bad precedent before he flips. In other words, he’s likely to join a 6-3 majority next year in delivering a decisive blow to Democrat attempts to rig the gerrymandering process (i.e. where they can draw 22-4 D to R maps in New York but Republican states can’t return the favor).

This was always the danger of going scorched earth on GOP redistricting attempts. The Supreme Court is not favorable to the left’s point of view on the VRA. By not just letting things slide in Alabama, Democrats will now pay a far steeper price than just losing one seat down South. You can expect Republicans in North Carolina to also seek relief from the Supreme Court after the ridiculous decision there last week. It’s open season now, and while Democrats were busy spiking the football on redistricting, the game obviously isn’t over yet.

In short, this decision sets up the coming death blow for many of the unconstitutional provisions of the VRA that have long given Democrats an unfair way to stack the deck. If gerrymandering is legal, and it absolutely is, then it should be available to both sides equally. To the victor belongs the spoils.

[LS]

“Political realignments have frustrated even the most ruthless redistricters”

I keep saying this but the McClellans of the world keep ignoring it. ANY wave election will undo the efforts of redistrictors. More importantly currently, as Baris’s recent polling shows, Trump (for example) is pulling a MAJORITY of Hispanic males; is winning 61% (!!) of white working class; and Rs overall are at a six- to eight-point advantage.

That’s just now. 1) Rutabaga is gonna continue his slow descent to zero. Nothing can save him. He’s too retarded/demented to change course, but even if he wanted to, keeping the country from 8-10% inflation over the next two years would take Reaganesque/Volckeresque efforts. He ain’t up to that, nor does he care. 2) DemoKKKrats will get NO credit for “ending” the China Virus. They will, as I argued in my substack column yesterday (”https://larrys.substack.com/p/the-great-collapse“) in fact be blamed MORE as the continuing flood of info about how dangerous these vaxxes really were seeps out. 3) The recession that is coming with or without the inflation will make mincemeat of many of these districts.

The only redistricting that would have saved the DemoKKKrats is one that had 95% black women in every district. To me, the only question is whether they lose 25, 35, or 55 seats.