As Democrats support a deceptively worded ballot measure to create a rank partisan gerrymander in Virginia, they nevertheless claim the moral high ground, and many in the news media agree with the Democrats.
Other than crying “Republicans started it,” they point to so-called “gerrymandering bans” that Democrats proposed and Republicans in Congress killed.
WHAT IS GERRYMANDERING AND CAN IT BE STOPPED?
NBC reporter Sahil Kapur made exactly that Democratic argument over the weekend.
This is a misleading argument for many reasons:
There was no vote on that gerrymandering language Kapur cites
The 50-50 Senate vote Kapur cites was the June 22 vote on an 883-page bill that included nearly every Democratic wish on voting. It would force all states to adopt automatic same-day voter registration, require all states to have 15 days of early voting, and override all state voter ID laws. The bill created new campaign finance systems, new taxes, and stated that voter ID laws were discriminatory. It was a massive liberal wish list, of which “redistricting reform” was about 12% of the text.
The ‘redistricting reform’ in the bill would actually mandate racial gerrymandering
The bill required all congressional mapmakers to consider the “impact of the plan on the ability of communities of color to elect candidates of choice.” Translated: Mapmakers must draw majority-black districts and majority-Hispanic districts. This sort of race-based line-drawing is exactly what has resulted in some of the most hideous gerrymanders in recent history.
The ‘redistricting reform’ in the bill denigrated or omitted rules that would actually limit gerrymandering
The best way to limit gerrymandering is to tie the hands of the map drawers by imposing rules that limit their creativity. One such rule would be respecting county, city, and town borders — a rule that would also create cohesive congressional districts. A second rule to limit gerrymanders would be to favor compact districts. Existing county or municipal lines are literally the lowest-ranked criteria in the bill’s redistricting language. Compactness isn’t mentioned at all, so it is not an allowable criterion under the bill.
LIBERAL DARK MONEY BOOSTS DEMOCRATS’ VIRGINIA REDISTRICTING EFFORT, MASSIVELY OUTRAISING OPPONENTS
There were good provisions in the bill, including a ban on mid-decade redistricting. This was a massive campaign-finance bill that basically repealed voter ID laws, required racial gerrymandering, and banned or denigrated actual gerrymandering reforms.
As a cherry on top, the chief sponsor of the House version was former Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes, who represented the most gerrymandered district in America.
So no, Republicans didn’t vote against gerrymander reform. They voted against a bad Democratic election bill.
