National Security: Gerrymander

Much of the domestic news lately has been occupied by the case of Texas wishing to redraw their congressional districts to permit greater representation by the majority republicans. As many as five seats are in play with this gambit. The minority democrats (at least 51) have bolted the state to safe havens in Illinois and New York, denying the Texas House of Representatives the two-thirds quorum to conduct business. Governor Greg Abbott has sent the Texas Rangers after the wayward democrats, vowing to bring them home to do their job.
There are several issues at play here. First, can Texas redraw its district lines at mid-term, with a census five years away? Second, can the democrat representatives legally run away from their job when the House is in session? If President Trump calls for the commerce department to conduct a mid-term census, is that legal, given that the last census contained “major statistical errors?” Another issue is who is counted: are non-citizens legal to count during a census for purposes of congressional representation?
The underlying point is “gerrymander,” a term coined two centuries ago for drawing district lines to favor one political party over another. It is named for a second-tier founding father, Elbridge Gerry, who, when serving as governor of Massachusetts, redrew districts to favor his party, one of which resembled a salamander on the map. Gerry served as James Madison’s first vice president in 1813. My point here is to explain that gerrymandering has been around a long time and what Texas is attempting to do is nothing new. In fact, you might say that democrats are better at gerrymandering than republicans.
Case in point: Illinois (one of the runaway democrat sanctuaries) has 17 congressional representatives, 14 of which are democrats. Yet 45 percent of the registered voters are republican. Seems as if they aren’t very fairly represented in the gerrymandered state of Illinois. One congressional district is so obviously biased as it runs for 200 miles along Interstate 55 and at the widest point, only ten miles.
Want another example? New England consists of six states: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhodes Island and Connecticut. Every one of their apportioned House seats (21) are in democrat hands although republicans are 40 percent of the population. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?
Apparently five large blue states that are mostly (83 percent) represented in Congress by democrats have republican minorities exceeding 40 percent. How is the point of view of a minority represented when the disparity is this great?
Texas is trying to fight back, claiming they can redistrict five seats from democrat blue to republican red. Maybe they can. Maybe our state of Florida will also strike and flip two congressional seats in the same manner. Smaller stakes are at play now that ‘red’ Indiana is underway with redistricting that could claim two democrat seats.
It is important to remember here that some state law permits this type of maneuver while others do not. After all, we are a constitutional republic where many of those issues are left up to individual states. If you have any doubt, reread Amendment 10 to the Constitution.
A related issue is who do we count to determine representation? It is no secret that the last administration ‘flooded the zone’ with illegal immigrants, mostly across our southern border with Mexico. Somewhere between 12 and 20 million illegally entered the U.S. with tacit approval from the Biden team. Do we count them for representation or not? California has five representatives they are not entitled to if citizenship is a requirement. The courts will have to sort this one out, I believe.
This column has argued only about representation in Congress. The same issues plague state legislature representation. In some cases, the gerrymandering is even more egregious. Republicans in California are even more disenfranchised in the capitol of Sacramento than in Washington, DC.
These are the political battles over gerrymandering and apportionment that are currently underway. There are many who believe that Trump lost the presidency in 2020, not because the other side didn’t get more votes, but because the system was rigged against them. There is a distinction between the two. Trump and his republican allies are trying to undo this rigging. Make sense?