Saturday, September 21, 2019
Friday, September 20, 2019
Republicans have rigged the maps and manipulated elections — why won't Democrats talk about it?
2020 Democrats won't talk
about our rigged electoral system. But if we don't fix that, their ideas won't
matter
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 11:00AM
(UTC)
As Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden,
Elizabeth Warren and the other leading Democratic presidential contenders
prepared to debate in Houston last week, Crystal Mason readied for an important hearing of her own less than 200 miles
away.
In 2016, Mason unknowingly
committed a crime by casting a provisional ballot. In Texas, citizens with
felony convictions are disenfranchised pending completion of their sentences.
Mason, on supervised release at the time, did not know that. While her ballot
was rejected, the district attorney nevertheless pursued a criminal case — and
won a staggering five-year sentence, a chilling precedent for provisional ballot users. All Mason
can do now is appeal the ruling.
Mason’s story — along with
a botched voter purge in Texas this spring, a strict
voter ID law that accepts a gun license at the polls but not a student
ID, and aggressive precinct closures in minority communities —
should have encouraged moderators to ask the Democratic candidates about their
democracy reform agendas. This conversation could have led to a broader
discussion about voter suppression, gerrymandering and the scourge of big money
in politics.
Once again, there was not a
single question on the subject. Democrats debated the intricacies of their
health care proposals and how they’d address gun violence and immigration —
none of which are actually likely to become law without first addressing the
structural issues that stand in the way of passing legislation extraordinarily
popular with most Americans.
There have now been three
Democratic debates. They have taken place in Florida, Michigan and Texas, each
of which exemplify the story of American democracy over the past decade:
Republicans took power in 2010, then rigged maps and election rules to prevent
Democrats from regaining power, even when they won more votes. And there still
hasn’t been a single extended conversation about it.
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Failing to ask about democracy
not only keeps the public in the dark about the root cause of Democratic
impotency over the past decade, but also gaslights the countless Americans who
have stood up as part of a nonpartisan movement to democratize our political
institutions.
In Michigan, for example,
Republicans gerrymandered the state so well that the party held nine of 14 congressional seats after 2012,
2014 and 2016, even in years when Democratic candidates won 200,000 more votes.
Democrats have also dominated the statewide vote for the state house since
2012, but have not been able to translate a majority of votes into a majority
of seats during this entire decade.
In response, the nonpartisan
Michigan-based group called Voters Not Politicians successfully led a statewide ballot initiative to end
gerrymandering by removing the power to draw state and congressional district
maps from politicians. A simultaneous grassroots effort to expand the franchise
culminated in another victorious ballot initiative that included
automatic and same-day voter registration.
In response, GOP
officials filed a lawsuit to prevent the voter-approved
independent redistricting commission from going into effect and made it more difficult to run ballot initiative
campaigns in the future.
Last year in Florida, the
Second Chances campaign won a ballot initiative for a state constitutional
amendment that brought together liberals and conservatives with the goal
of re-enfranchising those convicted of felonies who have completed the terms of
their sentence, excluding murder and sexual abuse perpetators. (Ex-felons
meeting those criteria in Florida — approximately 1.4 million of them at this
moment — had lost voting rights permanently unless granted clemency due to a Jim Crow-era constitutional
provision.)
Republican officials,
immediately following this victory, approved a new law restricting enfranchisement to those who paid fines,
fees and restitution — a modern-day poll tax. The state legislature, in recent
years, has additionally sought to make voter registration drives harder, limit early voting on college campuses and curtail language accessibility. Right now, there is a campaign to
make ballot initiatives almost impossible to win.
In Texas, partisan
gerrymandering likely cost Democrats five Congressional seats in
2016, according to election expert Stephen Wolf. Equally disturbing, the state
GOP has passed strict voter registration hurdles and implemented
discriminatory voter ID laws, all of which primarily targeted minorities and
communities of color.
The anti-democracy efforts in
Michigan, Florida and Texas — supported by millions of dollars in dark money
and independent expenditures — merely scratch the surface of partisan
gamesmanship. In states nationwide, as voting rights are rolled back, the next
wave of gerrymanders are being planned, and campaign finance regulations
assailed.
Our democracy is up for grabs.
We can resign ourselves to minority rule or work towards full enfranchisement
and equal representation. Democracy suffers every time we fail to elevate this
story. The news media, as the only profession with special constitutional
protections, holds an important responsibility here. Thus far, these news
organizations have not lived up to it.
The next debate will take
place next month in Ohio, another state plagued with gerrymandering, voter
purges and other anti-democracy endeavors. As Crystal Mason understands far too
well, we fail to discuss these topics at our own peril.
DAVID DALEY
David Daley, a former editor
of Salon, is the author of the national bestseller "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote
Doesn't Count" and the forthcoming “Unrigged: How Americans
Fought Back, Slayed the Gerrymander and Reinvented Democracy.”
ADAM EICHEN
Adam Eichen is an American
author and activist focused on highlighting the emerging democracy movement in
the United States. With Frances Moore Lappé, he co-authored "Daring Democracy: Igniting
Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want"(Beacon Press,
2017).
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