By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Gerrymandering in Gwinnett and elsewhere is not inevitable. Neither is it mandated that the two parties will ignore the needs of their constituents and only pursue their self-interest.
Any democracy is only as strong as its voters and the people that they elect. If they don’t support fair redistricting, then the steady march towards authoritarian rule is inevitable.
Along these lines, a recent study came out with disturbing findings regarding partisan redistricting. Pew research found that most Americans were rather lost when asked their views about the topic. Hardly any Republicans or Democrats have heard much about it. Of GOP voters, nearly two thirds were unsure how redistricting was handled, as were half of Democrats.
However, the principle of “one person-one vote” is key to any democracy or democratic republic. The results of this survey tell me that schools, the media and politicians are failing to educate our current and future voters about how the system should function to be consistent with this basic tenet of democracy.
So, what does the term “gerrymandering” mean? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” The key word to understand is “unfair”.
What is happening today under gerrymandering is unfair to all Americans, although it helps politicos of both parties.
Every 10 years, there’s a census. Subsequently, local, state and federal voting districts are drawn. In a few states, this is done objectively by non-partisan commissions. From the standpoint of fairness, all states should do this. But it is not mandated in the Constitution. And, very unfortunately, our current right-wing Supreme Court decided in a 2019 decision that it is legal and cannot be contested in the federal courts.
So, solely for political self-interest, almost all states don’t use a fair process versus a political one. As one source stated: “…the process is used to draw maps that put a thumb on the scale to manufacture election outcomes that are detached from the preferences of voters.”
At the national level last year, the “For the People Act” was introduced to stop state gerrymandering. It passed the U.S. House. However, because gerrymandering currently favors the GOP (which control most state legislatures), the Republican Senate leadership killed the bill.
Unless more enlightened leaders are elected, there will be little progress toward eliminating gerrymandering and our democracy will suffer.
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