The Supreme Court issued another defeat for democracy in refusing to eliminate partisan gerrymandering. One person, one vote was thrown out the window when the Court said they had no authority to step in on gerrymandering cases structured to maximize political advantage for one party by particular redistricting. The ruling declared that the Constitution did not give them the power to change redistricting unless it had been done for reasons of racial bias instead of partisanship.
However, the partisan redistricting by GOP led legislatures were actually racial in nature and devalued African-American votes by placing them in districts where the political outcome is predetermined. Drawing Congressional or legislative districts to contain mainly minority voters will provide them with minority or liberal Democratic representatives, but does not allow their voting power to be exercised in ways that additional Democratic representatives can be elected. Bizarre boundary lines are chosen by the legislative redistricting committees just to cut out Democratic voters from these districts, guaranteeing that Republicans will be elected in more districts even when their total votes in the state do not warrant that. The system the Supreme Court ruled to be okay is blatantly unfair and is racial in nature even though the Court claims it is merely partisan.
The XV Amendment to the Constitution gives Congress the ability to supersede the states in deciding whether voting rights have been taken from citizens because of race or color and passing legislation to correct any voting inequities. However, the Republicans who have passed these laws on a state level are not going to overturn them federally when they benefit from them. (Maryland had gerrymandering that benefited Democrats.)
Since the Supreme Court has refused to guarantee equal voting rights to all citizens taken from the Democrats by gerrymandering, either laws must be passed by Congress to abolish gerrymandering with independent redistricting committees in each state, or it should be instituted by Constitutional Amendment. Either pathway will be extremely difficult to implement and it appears that partisan gerrymandering will remain as a thorn in the side of democracy for a while to come. Unless new Supreme Court justices overturn the ruling on partisan gerrymandering or new and younger voters abolish it by Constitutional amendment or legislatively with new members of Congress and Senators, partisan gerrymandering is here to stay, increasing the power of rural conservative districts and taking power away from the cities and suburban districts that tend to vote Democratic. One person, one vote as the basis for democracy is dead. A sad state of affairs. Resurrecting Democracy www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020