High Stakes (and Low Profile) of Reapportionment
/Why is so little public attention being paid to legislative redistricting? It’s one of the most fundamental decisions a democracy must make. It occurs only once in a decade, and it is due to happen this year.
After every U.S. Census, our legislatures must re-establish their own district boundaries and for congressional districts, too. This is one of the most highly-charged, bare-knuckled political actions of all. Typically, this redistricting is done by central decision-makers to suit only themselves - to ensure their own individual re-elections - and over the years the result has sometimes been outrageous.
This time around the specific timetable is not yet clear, but redistricting could occur sometime in the next few months, once the 2020 census data is finally in hand. (The new census will show which states are winners or losers, as dictated by population shifts.) And yet there is mainly silence about this outside those private rooms where the lines are usually drawn, where the deals and the self-dealing go down.
Why is this? Is it because…
A. The politicians prefer the silence and no scrutiny?
B. Few reporters and editorial writers understand “gerrymandering” and how it’s done?
C. It doesn’t make for exciting news. It involves neither firearms (usually) nor flashing police lights nor actual blood on pavement?
D. All the above?
The answer, of course, is D - All of the above.
First of all, you can understand why the pols up on Capitol Hill, especially those in the current GOP supermajority in Tennessee, would prefer the inattention, for the lights to be kept dim. In some past decades, the work product has been downright shameful.
Take Tennessee’s 7th congressional district. It used to snake from the state’s northern boundary to the southernmost, from Clarksville on the Kentucky line to the eastern suburbs of Memphis. This served congressmen, not constituents. As GOP fortunes increased, it was re-drawn somewhat more compactly.
Another personal favorite (because I went to journalism school there) is Illinois District 4. Look up and see how it nearly encircles (but avoids) the Chicago inner-city.
Check out Tennessee’s state Senate District 20. It resembles the head of some ravenous monster with open jaws, eating Nashville’s inner-city. (I’m not making this up.) This manipulated map-making clearly served the GOP for years (the incumbent Democratic senator didn’t even run again in the next election after the re-draw) until last November when the incumbent Republican lost the seat to a Democrat.
Gerrymandering is a complicated topic, I grant you. Many in the news media either don’t understand it, or never get assigned to treat this subject. It’s not an easy story to tell. It cannot be covered in a 90-second news-break between Weather and Sports. Yet it goes to the beating heart of how representative government is supposed to function. For background see my 2019 column: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2019/07/03/supreme-court-destroyed-baker-v-carr-redistricting-decision/1623701001/
I was a Washington correspondent back in the 70s, and I remember meeting with a Tennessee congressman who had to excuse himself twice to take phone calls from Nashville. It turned out the caller was a friendly state legislator, a fellow Democrat, who was checking to see if the congressman approved the latest adjustment to his district boundary. (He approved.)
Nowadays there’s more technology involved but just as much self-interest. The pols who redraw the districts – be they Republicans, when they are the ruling majority as they are now, or the Democrats in their time of power – always have their ready talking points. One old standby, which neatly misses democracy’s point, is: “They do it to us when they’re in the majority, so don’t blame us when we do it.”
It all seems harmless, yes? Until it isn’t.
Redistricting is serious business, not least because carving up legislative and congressional districts have the capacity to dilute the voting power of minority communities – all to ensure the re-election of incumbents.
Further, these days nearly all partisan races at any level can quickly get swamped by national issues. This means incumbents cleave closest to the wishes of their primary voters. This is exactly how issues like Medicaid expansion (and all the people caught in the state’s healthcare gap) still languish in a policy dead zone in Tennessee because Republican Party ideology frowns on that issue.
Moreover, redistricting today is aided by modern computer software that can pinpoint blocks, streets and addresses of voter behavior - and then generate multiple scenarios for the majority to choose from. One current map-drawing exercise actually envisions eliminating Tennessee’s traditionally Democratic 5th District, dividing its (Democratic) voters among three neighboring (Republican) districts.
This process in 2021 needs to be watched. After all, Tennessee is where the landmark Baker v. Carr case arose.
That was in 1961. Because Tennessee’s legislature had failed to redraw the districts for many decades, the General Assembly and its funding decisions were still dominated by rural interests, all to the detriment of Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga. The U.S. Supreme Court imposed new rules for drawing legislative maps, and soon after that for congressional seats too.
Gerrymandering is not just a game of numbers in which the backroom boys draw funny-looking maps. It’s about democracy and fairness - it ought to value inclusion over marginalization - and so the process should be more transparent and its ultimate outcome reasonable no matter which side happens to be in power.
The already bizarre partisan behavior of Tennessee’s Republican supermajority in these most recent years is about to get its most serious test. How will it be managed in this current legislative session? As district lines are manipulated again by the insiders, more Tennesseans should follow along this time.
What will the process be? How open and accessible for citizens and voters to follow along?
Which committees will be involved? What instructions will the Speakers give to the committee chairs for how these choices are to be made? Will their meetings be in the daylight, or in secrecy? Will the maps under consideration be made public? Will there be a public hearing?
Note to Editors: Somebody should be paying very close attention.
© Keel Hunt, 2021
