The New York Times does not like the Texas redistricting decision. It's hard to know where to begin with their editorial, as it is so rife with error, omission and petulant whining (they even mention Bush v Gore), that only a full-on fisking will do it justice.
The Supreme Court, in a badly fractured decision yesterday, largely upheld Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of the Texas Congressional districts. Instead of standing up for a fair electoral landscape, the court produced a ruling that did little to ensure the vibrancy of American democracy, and that itself had an unfortunate whiff of partisanship.I'm beginning to smell that whiff myself. So far, we've seen the words "fair", "gerrymander" and "Tom DeLay," not to mention the shining-city-on-the-hill of "vibrant democracy." What could that mean?
Given the strong negative feelings that voters have about Congress — in a recent Times poll, just 23 percent of those surveyed approved of the job lawmakers were doing — it is startling how few races are expected to be competitive this fall.This was a problem during the long Democrat run as well -- in 1988 the Republicans tied the Democrats in overall vote, yet got 50 fewer seats, mainly for this reason.
This is largely because of increasingly sophisticated partisan gerrymandering that uses high-powered computers to draw lines that in many cases make voters all but irrelevant.True. I'd love to see all gerrymanders illegal, but is that what the Times wants? Surely they'll invoke the ghost of Democrat Phill Burton, who invented the computer remap. Surely they'll proceed to lambaste the previous Democrat Texas gerrymander that turned a Republican landslide (59-41% in votes) into a Democrat victory (17-15 seats). After all, if the 2000 election upset you with its narrow margin, ignoring a nearly 20% margin should have you buying guns.
Texas' 2003 redistricting was an extreme case. Mr. DeLay, who was then the House majority leader, led a fierce and successful campaign to capture Texas' Legislature for the Republicans. (He is facing criminal charges of using illegal corporate campaign contributions to do it.) Then, even though Texas had already redistricted after the 2000 census [actually a Federal Court dusted off the 1990 gerrymander and reinstituted it, ignoring Texas' wishes entirely], the Legislature took the rare step of redistricting again. The new lines were drawn in such a partisan way that Republicans ended up with nearly two-thirds of the state's Congressional delegation.Whoops! I guess they liked the prior scheme. 41% of votes = 53% of seats = fair. 60% of votes = 65% of seats = unfair. And they complained about Florida! Now we see what "vibrant democracy" means: we win.
The Supreme Court has indicated in the past that gerrymandering can be so egregious that it violates the Constitution's equal protection clause. But the court has never set out a test to determine what constitutes such a violation, and it failed to do so again yesterday.Yeah, too bad the prior districts weren't up for review; that might have done it.
The court has proved itself capable of thinking up elaborate tests when it wants to — it has made up standards virtually out of whole cloth, for example, to decide when Congress has infringed onProblems such as Republicans winning in rough proportion to their votes, rather than losing with a 20% margin of victory. If anything the 2003 redistricting showed the wisdom of the Court's jurisprudence -- egregious gerrymanders are unsustainable and will be rectified by the people so long as the courts stay out of it. That's what "vibrant democracy" is all about!abortionstates' rights. It is disappointing that the court is not as resourceful when it comes to protecting voters' rights. The court rightly struck down one Congressional district yesterday, citing the Voting Rights Act, but that did not begin to address the serious problems with the 2003 redistricting.
In this post-Bush-vs.-Gore era [*sigh*], the court's critics will note that it again split on partisan lines, with the most conservative justices most approving of the Texas lines. That was also true in a 2004 case in which it upheld, by a 5-to-4 vote, a pro-Republican redistricting in Pennsylvania. But that same year the court, disturbingly, affirmed a lower court's ruling striking down a pro-Democratic redistricting in Georgia as unconstitutional.Actually they vacated the decision and remanded, which is not the same as upholding. Further, the case was about upholding the Voting Rights Act, and as such had little to do with the Constitution, which the Act honors mostly in the breach.
It is disappointing that it could not have come up with a decision yesterday that had a greater appearance of fairness.I guess they should have used the NY Times as a yardstick of such appearance. There is a whiff of partisanship here all right, but the Times' editors shouldn't be looking too far from home for its source.