Governance by Gerrymander

State-by-state, the Republicans are using redistricting to tighten their grip on the country and the states. The courts are helping protect representativegovernment in some cases, but will it be enough?

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Texas is the big, ongoing issue and surfaced first as part of Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay's gerrymandering strategy.

Republicans were especially blatant here, as one of the new districts connects two voting areas by a narrow corridor 103 miles long to create a Republican district and cancel out Democrats.

[In TEXAS] Democrats challenging the reworked districts filed e-mails, memos, proposed maps, talking points and other communications Wednesday that they say show the GOP redistricting effort was orchestrated by high-ranking Republicans in Washington, including Jim Ellis, who was an aide to Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Ellis spent time in Austin earlier this year as the Legislature considered redistricting, meeting regularly with individual legislators and reporting progress back to DeLay. E-mails to DeLay are among the documents filed with the court.

In another e-mail, Ellis directs DeLay to instruct Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick to "eliminate House junior staffers ... completely from the congressional redistricting process." In the final days of the redistricting debate in the Texas Capitol, DeLay seemed the moderator between the divided House and Senate as he shuttled back and forth attempting to broker a deal. [Dallas/FW Channel 8 12/11/03]

But it's not just Texas, it's a national Republican strategy:

COLORADO Supreme Court strikes down GOP redistricting bid 12/01/03

The high court ruled 5-2 that passage of the GOP plan violated a section of the Colorado Constitution that says the state's congressional map can be redrawn only once per decade.

The Democrats have charged that the GOP redistricting effort in Colorado and Texas was part of a national plan led by the White House.

In Pennsylvania, when opponents cried: "Gerrymandering" the Republicans replied "So What?"

PENNSYLVANIA: High court weighs redistricting

The Supreme Court considered yesterday whether to give politicians new rules for drawing election districts in a case that questions whether the process has become too political. Justices were reviewing a fight from Pennsylvania over a congressional map that essentially redistricted three Democratic House members out of a job. [Washington Times 12/10/03]

"How unfair is unfair?" asked Justice Antonin Scalia. " If a party is getting two-thirds of the seats with less than half of the vote, I submit that's unfair," answered Paul M. Smith, who argued the case on behalf of a group of Democrats. Republicans hold 12 of Pennsylvania's 19 congressional seats (63%), but Democrats have a 445,000 statewide voter edge over the GOP. [LA Times 12/11/03 subscription]

Some states have had enough (it's about time) and have or are pushing for independent redistricting commissions, although politicians of both parties continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths, depending on whose ox is being gored at the time.

In heavily Republican Utah, Democrats backed a proposal to create an independent redistricting commission, but the state's Constitutional Revision Commission rejected the idea. In North Carolina, where Republicans complain about the maps Democrats draw, a Democrat and Republican in the Senate have joined to push for a new process. Similar issues have been raised in Virginia, California, Delaware, North Dakota and elsewhere.

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Article Author: Hal Pawluk

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