Rather
than discuss the 2016 presidential election or the 2014 midterms, I have
decided to devote this blog post to what I consider the biggest threat to
American Democracy. No, it isn’t a foreign threat such as China or terrorism,
nor is it a domestic threat such as national debt or the military-industrial
complex. The biggest threat to American Democracy is a concept called
gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering
originated in 1812, when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill
that redistricted the state in a way that benefited his Democratic-Republican Party.
One of the districts was redrawn in an extremely unorthodox way; the new
district looked so strange that it was said to resemble a salamander. The
district’s shape was combined with the name of then-Governor Gerry, and the
term “Gerrymandering” was born!
Gerrymander
is defined as “The
dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one
political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting
strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.” Here is an
example of gerrymandering in the modern day.
The green area represents an utterly
preposterous single district in the state of Illinois. The district is made
continuous through an extremely thin strip at the district’s western border,
thus making this abomination a legal district. The district was drawn this way
to limit both of the largely Hispanic regions of Illinois (which tend to vote
for the Democratic Party) in one single district.
Why is Gerrymandering a threat to
American democracy? There are two principle reasons. The first is that it
allows one single party to unfairly dominate the House of Representatives.
State districts are redrawn every 10 years in the United States, so whichever
party happens to fare better in said election gets a huge advantage in state legislatures that redraw the districts, and
therefore the House seats that represent those districts as well.
In 2010, the Republican Party
dominated state legislature elections in addition to congressional elections,
and so districts were redrawn to heavily favor the Republican Party, which
quickly paid off in the 2012 elections. Even though more Americans voted for
the Democratic Party in congressional elections, the Republican Party still
held a 33 seat advantage in the House of Representatives. This was a result of
the intense gerrymandering that occurred in 2010 by the Republican controlled
state legislatures.
The second reason that
Gerrymandering threatens American Democracy is because it allows for more
fringe candidates to win elections to congress, which leads to partisanship and
breakdown of negotiation. Because districts are purpose composed of voters that
vote for a single party, more extreme candidates are elected as a result in
these districts. For example, a Tea Party candidate is more likely to win an
extremely conservative district in New York and a progressive candidate is more
likely to win an extremely liberal district in Kentucky, whereas neither would
normally win an election in a district composed of liberals and conservatives.
When these candidates go to Congress, their political ideologies are so
different that they can find very little shared ground and compromise becomes
an exception more than a rule. As a result, we get do-nothing Congresses, such
as the Congress we are stuck with right now.
Gerrymandering is very damaging to
the American political system and to democracy itself. The country would be
much better off if independent commissions designed the districts rather than
political parties with blatant self-interests. Until a gerrymandered system is
replaced with a new one, the United States will continue to exist as a land of
political turmoil, and democracy will live in constant threat until the day it
dies… Perhaps that’s a bit extreme. At any rate, gerrymandering does much more
harm than good to representation, and we should do as much as we can to get rid
of it.
