| Guest Columnist
Martin Gottlieb is a retired editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News.
The U.S. Supreme Court has newly ruled that no degree of partisan gerrymandering is excessive. This is an aggressive betrayal of the Founding Fathers. But it should be grabbed as a potential turning point for the nation’s better.
The decision came in a Texas case. At the order of President Donald Trump, Texas tore up a profoundly partisan map of its congressional districts that it had adopted in 2021, and it substituted one even more manically partisan. The new one is designed to flip five more seats to the Republicans. In defending this decision before the top court, the Texas authorities said explicitly that their goal was to serve the Republican Party. The six Republican justices said fine.
The justices would surely say that their motives are not partisan, that their ruling will apply to states run by Democrats, too.
So one possible response to the decision is to say, OK, now we know the rules, and this is not such a huge turning point, because the country has plenty of Democratic states, too, and, after all, partisan gerrymandering is not exactly new. Maybe the gerrymandering that results now will be a partisan wash or close to it.
But the turning point is this: We are redefining the U.S. House of Representatives. The Founders made House terms only two years long because they wanted the House to be the arm of the federal government that is most responsive to changes in public opinion. The Founders did have qualms about putting too much power in the hands of potentially fickle voters. But they addressed those qualms by, among other things, giving senators six-year terms (and having them elected by state legislators) and giving judges lifetime appointments.
But when legislative districts are simply assigned to particular parties (the most common goal of gerrymandering), the House becomes the least responsive body to public opinion of all elected bodies.
Change in that direction has been happening through recent decades, partly because computers make it easier for politicians to design districts as they wish.
In 1874, the Democrats gained 94 seats in the House. In 1894, the Republicans gained 110. In 1938, the Republicans gained 81. (Casting a “straight” party-line ballot – voting for the same party in all races – was easier and more common then. That fostered party “waves.”)
In the last half century, the highest numbers of seats lost by a party in midterms have been 63, 54 and 41, and the average has been just over 20 (if you count the two elections in which the president’s party actually lost a few seats). Close observers have warned that fewer and fewer districts are in play.
It can be argued that the current situation is not so bad, that the electorate does still have a chance to make a major statement in midterms. But why end that?
If gerrymandering is carried far enough, and if it has the impact it is intended to have, House elections can become a joke, a charade offering a mere facade of democracy.
That is likely to foster cynicism about democracy itself. Undercutting the belief that our democracy is a real democracy is a good way to undercut support for democracy.
Why the Supreme Court doesn’t reject as unconstitutional the current effort to undermine a major goal of the framers is a mystery.
So what to do?
Before Texas, the country had been moving by fits and start in a certain direction: taking map drawing out of the hands of politicians and giving to non-partisan boards. Ohio had moved in that direction via the referendum. California had done it. About 10 states of varying political hues had.
Texas ended that. Democrats decided – predictably enough – that trying to be non-partisan now would be politically idiotic.
But in the long run the option is still there.
If a constitutional amendment is not the answer, what’s the plan? Rhetorical question. There’s none.
Martin Gottlieb is a retired editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News.
