Tag Archives: gerrymandering

All Posts, Congress, Constitution, justice

REREADING THE CONSTITUTION

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When I’m confused and disappointed by the actions of our elected leaders, I sometimes get the urge to reread our Constitution.  Here are thoughts from a recent rereading.

From Article 1 Section 4: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…”  Our Congress has the authority to standardize how and when we elect its members.  It seems reasonable to conclude that Congress could prohibit partisan gerrymandering.

From Amendment 14 Section 1:  “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”  Legislative districts are created by state law.  Here in North Carolina, the Legislature’s stated purpose in gerrymandering the districts was to elect Republicans to 10 of the 13 seats even though nearly half of voters actually vote for Democrats.  They achieved that goal.  The law that created gerrymandered districts seems to deny equal protection to citizens who disagree with Republicans.

From Article 2 Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  Bribery would apply if a President accepted a bribe. Would it also be bribery if a Presidential candidate or his team agreed to not implement sanctions on Russia in exchange for information useful to their campaign?

The US Supreme Court has received gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.  The lower courts are so politicized that news reports generally include whether the judges were appointed by Democrats or Republicans.  The implication is that a judge is likely to rule in favor of the party that appointed her or him.  That is an awful but sadly credible assumption to make about our supposedly independent judiciary.

If the court rules against gerrymandering, that is likely to result in Democrats gaining seats in the House of Representatives.  In addition to being the body that originates federal budgets, the House is the body with authority to impeach a President – an action which a Republican led House might be more reluctant to consider.

If the Senate had approved President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, there would be a 5-4 split of Democrat vs Republican judges.  Instead, the Republican controlled Senate refused to even consider the nomination for months – in hopes of winning the presidency and getting a Republican nominee.  They succeeded in that; and with the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch there is a 5-4 split favoring Republicans.  What will it say about our Supreme Court if a Gerrymandering decision is decided by that margin?

The Presidential election of 2000 may well have been swung from Al Gore to George W. Bush by a party-line 5-4 Supreme Court decision that stopped the Florida vote recount.  We’ll never know.  Nor will we know whether the US would have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 9-11 under President Gore.  Such decisions change our history in profound ways.

Underlying many of the suspicions, malfunctions and failures of our government is the increasingly bitter partisan divide. Note however, that political parties are not even mentioned in our constitution.  Only individuals, not political parties, have a constitutional right to be on a ballot.  To protect their power (and the President), Republicans are now attacking the credibility of important institutions including our FBI, CIA and Justice Department.  Russian agents have effectively used social media to discredit those same agencies.  How ironic is it to find Republican leadership and Russian espionage agents on the same side?

President Washington warned, in his farewell address, that political parties, “…are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” It’s an apt description of current events.

Nations succeed and become great when most of the people support them and feel fairly treated.  When a large proportion feel mistrust and mistreated, nations fail.  Rather than “becoming great again”, our nation is in jeopardy due to citizen mistrust of elected officials.  My conclusion is that it’s up to voters to save the union. No one else can do it.

All Posts, civil rights, justice, north carolina

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

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Allegations of cheating and foreign influence in our recent elections abound. Many Americans suspect that elections and consent have been stolen.  What has happened to “consent of the governed” ?

Our Declaration of Independence explains the importance of consent: “… all men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights … to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”  The first purpose of government is to secure the rights of citizens.  The authority of government is derived from “consent of the governed”.  Under our constitution, voters consent to be governed under laws passed by election winners.  Consent  means majority consent, not unanimous consent.  Non-voters gave tacit consent by not participating.

Why do citizens across our political spectrum believe that consent of the governed is being undermined by cheating, rigging and outside influences?  Here  are examples, some of which focus on North Carolina, but similar conditions exist in many states.

Our intelligence agencies say that Russia hacked into computer systems of multiple candidates and both major political parties.  The CIA concluded that they used stolen information in an attempt to manipulate our presidential election.

Disinformation has become a science used not only by Russia but also by non-governmental political interest groups.  Consider clandestine videos that were expertly edited to make it appear that Planned Parenthood offered to sell aborted fetuses.  The untrue charges were amplified on social media and cable news channels in ways that made them seem credible and then used in election campaigns.  Allegations that Hillary Clinton was running a child-sex ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlor seemed ridiculous; but they were spread by Republican sympathizers and did affect public behavior.

North Carolina provides examples of flagrant offenses against consent of the governed.  Republicans used unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud to justify new voter ID requirements.  It was subsequently proven in court that the legislature unconstitutionally gave intentional preference to forms of identification that minorities are less likely to possess as compared to white voters.

By gerrymandering North Carolina’s congressional districts for partisan advantage, Republicans won ten of 13 seats (77%) with only 53% of the votes.  They intended exactly that result, publicly predicted it and bragged about it.  CLICK HERE to see the Republican website that explains the gerrymandering strategy with which they maintain control of the House of Representatives and state legislatures.  Their manipulations result in the “consent” of Democrats and black voters having less influence on elections than the consent of Republican and white voters.

Here are results of gerrymandering in some southern states
Here are results of gerrymandering in some southern states

Do you wonder why some people burn American flags or refuse to stand for the nation’s anthem?  The root cause of their grievances might be that “consent of the governed” has been systematically and intentionally denied through actions like those I’ve described.  That same kind of grievance led to the Declaration of Independence.

There are things that we can do to correct our problems.  We can make voting easier through automatic registration of eligible voters, easy access to early voting and easy access to voting by mail.  We can increase confidence in our elections by maintaining a paper trail and record of every ballot so that recounts are meaningful, easy, and fast whenever they are needed.  We can ban redistricting for partisan, ethnic, economic, religious or cultural advantage.  We can reject negative campaigns and character assassination by supporting candidates based on their positive plans for action and their character.

First and foremost, we must elect candidates who value the consent of ALL of the governed.  Changing election laws for partisan or personal advantage is immoral, unethical and unpatriotic, even if it is legal.  Some who care more about winning than about the principles of self-governance believe that their causes are important enough to justify “whatever it takes to win”.  Such thinking should be unacceptable to free people.  Protecting “consent of the governed” is more important than any one cause.

Consent of the governed will be effective only if we voters pay careful attention and cast our votes judiciously.  If we don’t care enough to do that, we will enable manipulation of our consent and we will reward leaders who divide rather than unite us.  No matter how depressed or exuberant we feel about the outcome of this election, the future remains in the hands of voters if we will fully exercise the rights that we have inherited from prior generations.

CLICK HERE for expert opinion of North Carolina’s election integrity.

CLICK HERE for comparison of US election integrity to other nations.

CLICK HERE to see the nature of problems with US election integrity.

CLICK HERE to see how Republicans have used gerrymandering to dominate the southern United States

All Posts, campaign finance, north carolina, race

MAKING DEMOCRACY POINTLESS

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“Making Democracy Pointless” should be the new tagline of North Carolina government.  The Republican Party has seized  nearly election-proof and court-proof control of choosing the state’s representatives in Congress.  Their methods were mostly legal, but that doesn’t make them ethical.  The harm they have done extends beyond the actions of the officials they elected.  They have confirmed cynical suspicion that our votes don’t matter – that democracy is indeed pointless.  That is a terrible fate for government of, by and for the people.

Here’s how they did it:

  1. Prior to 2010 elections, the Washington DC based Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) contributed $1.25 million to “Real Jobs NC” an organization launched by wealthy Republican donors including Art Pope.  By targeting about two dozen state legislative races for huge spending and attack ads against Democrats, they won both the house and the senate. That put Republicans firmly in charge of drawing congressional districts after the 2010 census.
  2.  The RSLCs map making team, armed with exceptionally sophisticated computer technology and data, were hired by the Republican legislature to draft congressional district maps.  Some work was supervised on-site by Art Pope, who was retained as co-counsel to the legislature.  The map-making strategy was simple – pack large concentrations of Democratic voters and African Americans into just 3 of North Carolina’s congressional districts. The remaining 10 districts would favor Republicans. The maps were tested prior to adoption by checking how voters in each new district voted in the last election.  The tests demonstrated that John McCain carried all ten of the “Republican” districts in the 2008 Presidential election despite losing the state to President Obama.

2012 election results proved the effectiveness of the Republican maneuvers.  With only 49 percent of the votes, Republicans won 69 percent of congressional races and changed the North Carolina congressional delegation from a 7-6 Democrat majority to a 9-4 Republican advantage.  In 2014 they achieved their desired 10-3 split.  Democrats won the  3  districts into which they had been packed with over 70 percent of the vote.

North Carolina is one example of the national Republican gerrymandering strategy.  Their website brags that,  “Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents.  But the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a Republican and presides over a 33-seat House Republican majority during the 113th Congress.”  How much difference did gerrymandering make? Imagine the last four years with a narrow Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and a Democrat as Speaker of the House.  It probably made that much difference.

Republicans defend their actions by pointing out that Democrats did the same thing when they were in power.  It’s true.  Modern computer technology and data may have made Republicans more effective, but there’s no doubt that Democrats gerrymandered. Recently a few states including California and Iowa have implemented non-partisan or bi-partisan redistricting plans as attempts to assure fair elections.

Meanwhile, North Carolina’s maps have been thrown out by a panel of  federal judges who ruled that the influence of African American voters was unfairly reduced by packing the great majority of them into only three districts.  The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a Republican appeal.    North Carolina Republicans objected loudly to the court’s decision but they were well prepared for it.  They have proudly presented new maps which they say are designed keep their current 10-3 advantage in the congressional delegation.

The court forbade gerrymandering to disenfranchise a race of people.  But gerrymandering for partisan advantage is merely unethical, not illegal.  Republicans intend to select their voters again, rather than allowing voters to select their representatives.  And it seems unlikely that courts will stop them.

We need new redistricting laws at the state or federal level to preserve our democracy.  There are Republicans as well as Democrats who feel the shame of cheating to win  elections and who want fair redistricting.  Now is a fine time time for all who value representative democracy to do what we know is right by creating  districts without unfair advantages for any group or party.