Election Results in Mixed Emotions

Like many Democratic voters and activists the recent election results have left me with mixed emotions. We’re all pretty happy that Joe Biden will be president in January. Many of us are disturbed by the level of support the reality show star pretending to be president received from Republican voters. The man is incompetent and yet 10 million more Americans voted for him in 2020 than did in 2016. Fortunately nearly 13 million more voted for Biden than Hillary Clinton. No sitting president has lost by as wide a margin since 1932 when the Great Depression was in full swing and Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover.

I’m frustrated because even with such an overwhelming margin of victory control of the United States Senate is in doubt and the only chance we have is for Georgia to elect two Democrats in the runoff there in early January. If they both Democrats win, each party will have 50 senators and Vice President Harris will be the tie breaker. If either or both lose we will likely see Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doing everything he can to obstruct President Biden, much like he did to President Obama. That will mean preventing the appointment of dozens of federal judges all over the country, refusal to confirm cabinet nominations, failing to hold hearings on legislation passed by the House and much more.

I’m encouraged that judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush are shutting down lawsuits claiming election fraud but providing no evidence. I worry because the Republican Party has lurched toward authoritarianism under the current president and its leaders like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are continuing to lead the charge with full throated support of debunked election fraud claims that their own judges have rejected.

I look forward to Joe Biden reversing much of the damage done by his predecessor but that’s not enough. I want real progress on really important issues like climate change and health care. I fear that once again too many will sit on their hands now that he has won and forget the lesson of the Obama administration which is that if we the people don’t demand such progress Congress will be all too happy to just go along to get along.

The increased support voters have shown for authoritarian leaders here like in much of Europe gives me great concern about 2024. There is precedent for my trepidation, just look at Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party have politicized the courts, decimated independent media, destroyed academic freedom, hobbled civil society, and promoted xenophobia. Orbán’s seizure of absolute power at the beginning of April, under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic, culminates a decade of authoritarian moves. Turkey is another example of the trend toward authoritarian leaders where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone from being a model of democratic political Islam to a traditional autocrat, using a counterterrorism campaign to crack down on dissent and a failed coup as an excuse to purge political opponents.

If you want to see improvement in your life and the lives of your family you’re going to have to stay engaged for the long term. Voting every two years isn’t enough, even participating in get out the vote activities for a few months each election cycle isn’t enough. It’s going to take calling our legislators and badgering them about the issues that matter to you to prevent our democracy from failing like Hungary and Turkey. As President Obama once pointed out “We are the change we’ve been waiting for.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 18, 2020

Redistricting Texas Part 2

Last week I promised to continue my discussing redistricting and gerrymandering and I’ll get to that in a moment but first I have one very important thing to say; Donald Trump, you’re fired! I’ve been aching to say that for four long years and just had to get it out of my system, now on to redistricting.

Last week I closed by pointing out that in Texas like many other states both parties have been responsible for partisan gerrymandering when the opportunity presented itself.  In 1990, the last time Democrats controlled redistricting the drew maps that allowed them to win 70% of Texas’ congressional seats will only winning 49.9% of the votes while the 47.8% of the votes Republicans received only earned them 30% of the congressional seats in the 1992 election. 20 years later in 2010 Republicans returned the favor by drawing maps that allowed their 50.4% of the votes to earn them 69% of congressional seats while Democrats won 46.93% of the votes but only earn 31% of the congressional seats in 2018, long after the maps had been in place.

After the 2010 Census, 75% of the growth in our population came from the Hispanic community. Texas gained 4 congressional seats, three went to Democrats and one to Republicans in the 2012 election, yielding 24 to 12 seats. 2014 saw Republicans pick up one more to yield a 25 to 11 split that remains today.

We the voters will get no help from the Supreme Court on this issue as they court ruled on case Rucho v Common Cause on June 27, 2019. By a vote of 5-4, the justices ruled that courts should stay out of disputes over partisan gerrymandering. The practice of partisan gerrymandering may be distasteful, the court concluded, but it is a problem that politicians and the political process, rather than courts, should solve. That’s a problem in Texas because at the state level there is no process for voters to petition for change of any kind unlike in Missouri, Colorado and Michigan.  In those states and others a ground swell of voter dissatisfaction encouraged activists to organize petition drives to put non-partisan and citizens redistricting commissions on the ballot either as legislation or constitutional amendments. Those measures passed with overwhelming voter support.  California has had a non-partisan citizens redistricting for a decade now which has drawn much more representative maps than the politicians of either party ever had.

We all pay a steep economic price for a legislative system that has no accountability for results. We end up with legislators that are not responsive to the needs of the people. When legislators draw safe districts for themselves, they essentially move the true race for the election to the primary. Since so few people turnout to vote in the primary, that means less than 10% of the general population are determining who our elected officials are.

Like many activists in Texas I had hoped that this year Democrats would win control of the state House which would have pitted the against the Republican controlled Senate and perhaps given both sides some incentive to compromise by putting redistricting in the hands of a non-partisan body. Now, with no change in the House there’s little incentive to give up power and I’m betting that Democrats will end up with only one of the three new congressional seats when all is said and done.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 11, 2020 

Redistricting Texas Part 1

Possibly the most important piece of business that the state legislature will address when it convenes in January is redistricting since the decennial census results will be distributed early next year. If the election results have been good to Democrats in the state house; 2021 will be the first opportunity Democrats have had in more than 20 years to have some say in how state senate, state house, and congressional districts are drawn and more important the process that draws those districts.

Once each state has been allocated its congressional seats state legislatures or other state based bodies are required to draw lines for each congressional district which are required to contain the same number of residents in each district plus or minus a small percentage. Notice I said residents, not voters or citizens. The constitution says in Article I, section 2, clause 3 “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." As the population of Texas has grown substantially over the last decade while some state have been stagnant or seen declines we’re likely to gain 3 more congressional districts.

Gerrymandering refers to drawing districts in such a way that it favors one party or group of people over another. There are two types: racial and partisan. Racial gerrymandering was outlawed by enactment of the VRA in 1964. Partisan gerrymandering is still allowed. The problem is that race and partisanship often go hand in hand, in other words elections are racially polarized in our state. White people usually vote one way, and minority groups will vote the other. This means that partisan gerrymandering easily turns into racial gerrymandering. And, Texas is a repeat offender when it comes to discriminating against minority groups in our election maps, and both the Democrats and Republicans have been found guilty. Partisan gerrymandering has been ingrained in our political system since our country’s founding. In 1812 the Boston Gazette published a story on such redistricting using an illustration of a salamander and referring to a beneficiary, Elbridge Gerry, naming it gerrymander.

We live in Congressional District 15 which is around 287 miles north to south and State Senate District 21 at around 221 miles end to end. Then there’s Congressional District 35 running from south Austin to east San Antonio through a narrow strip on 1-35 that often contains nothing but the highway. All these districts are drawn to pack Democratic voters in the fewest possible districts so that more districts can be drawn with Republican majorities, it’s called packing.

Packing is when a political party concentrates opposition party’s voters into a few districts in order to reduce the opposition’s voting power. This creates districts that are heavily in favor of the opposition’s party, reducing that party’s representation in other districts.

Cracking is when a party dilutes supporters of the opposing party by spreading them across many districts. This denies the opposition’s supporters a chance to have group representation in their district.

Gerrymandering is about politicians picking their constituents rather than constituents picking their elected officials. Since politicians routinely abuse the process voters in some states have taken the process out of their hands. Both parties in Texas have gerrymandered districts when in power and have suffered it when not in power. Now might be a good time for both parties to consider creating a non-partisan process so they’ll never be on the short end of the stick again. I’ll talk more about this next week.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 4, 2020