What’s a party out of power to do?
If it takes criminal minds, the GOP is flush with them. Republicans are determined to use every legal, quasi-legal, and outright illegal means of securing permanent one-party control of government exclusively for their kind of people. The conservative-dominated United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is on board with becoming a Potemkin third branch in support of that very goal.
Mark Joseph Stern explains what it means if the Roberts Court eviscerates what’s left of the Voting Rights Act:
If the Republican-appointed justices end federal protections for minority representation, as they sounded eager to do during Wednesday’s arguments in Callais v. Louisiana, Southern states can quickly gerrymander Black and brown communities into oblivion. The resulting maps will hand white voters almost total control over these states’ congressional maps, producing a net gain of 15 to 19 GOP seats in the House of Representatives. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn explains, the VRA’s demise could put the House out of reach for Democrats outside of a rare “blue wave” election.
Blue states’ natural response would be to engage the electoral arms race and gerrymander Republicans out of their states’ congressional delegations.
Such a strategy would require painful trade-offs: Congress could become even less diverse, since racial minorities in blue states would have fewer opportunities to elect the representatives of their choice. And the number of truly competitive House elections would shrink even more, further eroding democratic accountability. The net effect, though, would be a substantial boost for the Democratic Party that could offset many of the gains that Republicans are poised to reap. The result may not be a Republican-dominated House so much as a Congress with far fewer members of color—an outcome that the justices bent on destroying the Voting Rights Act blithely dismissed on Wednesday.
So long as the House is whiter and more male overall, many from the MAGA world might not care. What they want is a congress that looks like the America of yesteryear. And that’s what a decision on Callais may produce, Stern explains. If the court decides that VRA-compliant districts are racially impermissible gerrymanders, Democratic legislatures might have to redraw “racial minorities into whiter districts to more efficiently convert Democratic votes into House seats.” Or else see their power eroded further.
Republicans have never been reluctant to throw their own voters under the bus so long as more Democrats go with them. They play percentages. But here’s how that might manifest after a Callais decision in large blue states:
Consider New York. The state’s 26 House seats are currently split between 19 Democrats and seven Republicans. That includes many majority-minority districts in and around New York City. (Depending on how they’re defined, New York has about 10 such districts.) Currently, to comply with the VRA, the legislature has grouped many minority neighborhoods—so-called communities of interest—in districts together. But since nonwhite voters are disproportionately Democratic, that produces “wasted votes”: ballots cast in excess of what the Democrat needs to win. If the legislature “unpacked” these districts by dispersing minorities into areas now dominated by white Republicans, it could enact a map that gives Democrats 24 House seats and Republicans just two. That’s a five-seat pickup for Democrats.
Lather, rinse, repeat in other large, blue states.
Stern concludes:
It will not be blue states’ fault, though, when the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act. The question will be how best to respond to the judicial destruction of a landmark civil rights statute that did more to advance multiracial democracy than any other law in history. They can strive to uphold its spirit by fighting a losing battle for minority representation. Or they can exploit its wreckage to build a new map of power.
Stern doesn’t address the potential, longer-term backlash from voters to this voting rights retrenchment. Those newly gerrymandered under the bus — Republicans, Democrats and, importantly, independents — are not going to enjoy having no voice in Congress. How will they respond? By giving up on voting altogther, driving down the country’s already miserable participation rate? Or once they realize they are paying taxes to support a government that no longer represents them as it once at least purported to, will they demand structural change?
The only way to fix some of the damage done by the Roberts court, Republican election manipulation, and an electoral arms race is with constitutional amendments. Yes, those are notoriously had to pass. But emisserate enough Americans, and both major parties might find that their own partisans as well as the growing plurality of independents may insist.
But God knows how long that might take to happen. It was 13 years between passage of Prohibition and its repeal by popular demand.
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense