Gerrymandering: What hath Texas wroth?

Gerrymandering: What hath Texas wroth?

With Texas emulating states like Illinois in gerrymandering its congressional districts, other states like California have threatened to redistrict to get more democrat seats. Two can play this game. But first a bit of history. Eldridge Gerry was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts and was a founding father and James Madison’s vice president. Marblehead’s place in history is recounted in the wonderful Indispensables, Patrick O’Donnell’s thrilling history of its sailors and their role in rowing Washington across the Delaware at the battle of Trenton. Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Initially he refused to sign the Constitution because it did not contain a bill of rights. When he was governor of Massachusetts Gerry approved a revision of the state’s voting districts that benefitted his own party. Hence the name gerrymandering. Incidentally, Gerry pronounced his name “Gary” and he lost his race for re-election.

Texas is going to get five new republican seats. Currently there are 25 republicans and 13 democrats. The new map is slated to produce 30 republicans and 8 democrats. This follows the gerrymandering of California with 52 congressional seats while only 9 are republican. The Texas democrats fled to Illinois to avoid a quorum. Illinois only recently gerrymandered its districts to eliminate two republican seats resulting in only 3 republican seats out of 17. California’s Gavin Newsom has threatened to overturn the state’s committee entrusted with mapping congressional districts to generate 5 new democrat seats. Illinois is threatening to gerrymander even more to get rid of both republican seats. New York has said that it might do so as well. Almost comically, Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, who is a few fries short of a happy meal, said that she might too gerrymander. Then someone reminded her that her state already is 8-0 democrat.

On the other hand, the republican controlled states of Missouri, Ohio, Florida and Indiana could get rid of democrat seats. In all, the political pundits say that the democrat controlled states might squeeze out another seat or two but essentially they have tapped out. Republicans on the other hand have not, meaning that republicans are likely to win the gerrymandering wars.

Along with the redrawing of congressional maps, the topic of the census inevitably arises. The census counts people and not citizens. Trump tried to get the census changed in his first term and failed. Now he has issued an executive order to have the census count only citizens. Look for a barrage of lawsuits from the democrats. Why? The republicans contend that one of the reasons why Biden left the border open was to attract more illegals which would then be counted in the census. The democrats must agree or else they would not sue. Vice President Vance has said that California “has way more House seats than it should, because they have such a high population of illegal aliens. So they get rewarded for welcoming illegal aliens into their state, giving them federal benefits, actually asking the taxpayers of states like Ohio to give subsidize them, and then those same taxpayers in Ohio and Indiana and elsewhere, they have fewer congressional representatives, because of what California has allowed to happen.” Vance says that while 17 percent of the California delegation is republican, the party gets 40 percent of the votes in the state. Vance contends that because the census counts people if it only counted citizens the republicans would have 10 more seats. Some others have gone as far as contending that the democrats have 22 more seats In the House by taking the number in a congressional district (761,000) and dividing that into the number of illegals supposed to be in the country, 16.8 million. 

Far be it for me to question the math prowess of our vice president since he went to the Ohio State University but he just might be overstating the issue. First, illegals cannot vote in federal elections. Yes I know there can be shenanigans but bear with me. Let us assume that a certain number of citizens move out of a California district to Texas and are replaced one for one with illegals. Although it is possible that California would keep the same number of seats, there is no guarantee since Texas would be gaining population both from citizens moving from California and illegals who reside in the state. So Texas by increasing its population while California’s is stagnant would result in California losing a seat and Texas gaining one. Second, statistics like republicans get 40 percent of the vote so they should have 40 percent of the seats doesn’t make any sense. Suppose the republicans are concentrated in only a few select districts? Or suppose they are scattered equally around the state and lose each district being outvoted 60% to 40% which in politics is a landslide. Then they would win 40 percent of the vote and have zero seats. That was the case with Louisiana where the courts ordered a racial gerrymandering to create a second majority minority district. More on that later. Third, Vance and others like him are assuming that the illegals migrate predominately to democrat run states like California, Illinois and New York. But what about Florida and Texas? Also, ATTENTION JD: 39 of California’s 52 congressional districts are majority minority. That is 75 percent. Yet whites make up 44% of the California population. Have California whites been racially gerrymandered? Shouldn’t whites have 44 percent of the seats (23) rather than the 25% (13) they have now? Aren’t the whites in California being denied adequate representation based on race? Hum?

How can one tell if the illegals are affecting congressional seats? One would have to look at each congressional district while maintaining the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The Pew Research Center did that type of analysis and said of the 2020 census that if illegals were excluded then there would be a shift in three seats. California, Texas and Florida would lose a seat while Alabama, Ohio and Minnesota would gain a seat.  So if the republicans were to win all the seats, they would only increase their count by three not 22. By the way, the Cato Institute – a libertarian think tank – found that illegal migration has benefitted republican controlled states more than democrat ones between 2019 and 2023 with 1.2 million going to republican states and 72,000 to democrat states. Oops. Maybe the republicans should have looked at the numbers before they started their whining.

I think what is more significant than the gerrymandering brouhaha is something that few are reporting on. That is the Supreme Court case of Louisiana v. Callais, reported in passing by Jeffrey Blehar in his National Review piece “Liberation Day Comes to Washington, D.C.” 

https://www.nationalreview.com/carnival-of-fools/liberation-day-comes-to-washington-d-c/

The court has put this on its docket for September. This is a case of racial gerrymandering in the state of Louisiana to create a majority minority district giving the state two based on race rather than one. Previously in Robinson vs Landry a state district court ruled that having only one majority minority district in the state violated Section 2 of the Voters Rights Act. Needless to say the district is anything but compact and uniform. It literally runs diagonally through the state to get enough blacks to make the new district majority minority. The redrawing resulted in the defeat of the white republican congressman by a black democrat. The losing congressman and his white constituents sued claiming that redistricting solely on the basis of race is unconstitutional and violated the Equal Protection clause and is a racial gerrymander. If the Supreme Court were to rule with the plaintiffs it would overturn Section 2 of the Voter Rights Act and imperil democrat seats in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. Ruling Section 2 unconstitutional would be an earthquake would be an understatement. Such a ruling would result in demonstrations throughout the country, likely on an unprecedented scale. I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that a colorblind reading of the Constitution may be at odds with the Court’s prior interpretation of the enforcement of the 14^thand 15^th Amendments. But then, maybe not. I am anxious to see what happens in this case.

Finally, if the courts only intervene in racial but not political gerrymandering, then couldn’t it be argued that blacks are not being racially gerrymandered since 90+ percent of them are democrats? Just saying.