Democrats Out of Power for Decades? The Supreme Court’s Gerrymandering Case and Examples from Asia
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-out-of-power-for-decades-the-supreme-courts_us_5a05c85be4b0cc46c52e69d3
While Democrats are busy popping champagne to celebrate a small handful of modest victories on November 7th, the Supreme Court is busy deciding a case that could help ensure that they spend the next few decades out of power in most of the country. The decision considers an egregious bit of gerrymandering that Republicans have accomplished in Wisconsin, which allowed the GOP to hold on to 60% of the seats in Wisconsin’s State legislature despite Democrats winning 53% of the vote. Unless the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s ruling against it, this type of political gerrymandering is legal and Republicans, its principal practitioners and beneficiaries, can be surprisingly unabashed about its use. When asked why North Carolina’s electoral map gives 10 seats to Republicans and 3 Democrats despite a close popular vote a Republican lawmaker replied: “Because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
Gerrymandering overwhelmingly benefits Republicans, essentially because they have both a greater will and ability to gerrymander. For details on how this works, check out the work of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the Princeton Election Consortium. The effect is that in the US House of Representatives and many state legislatures Republicans get more seats for the same number of votes as Democrats would. So, Republicans can lose the popular vote and still maintain a majority. This is what happened in the House in 2012 when they lost by over a million votes, but won 33 more seats than the Democrats (a similar outcome is likely in 2018). Or, Republicans can win by a slim margin and still maintain a comfortable majority for passing legislation, as they did in 2016...
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