gerrymandering – Sheila Kennedy

In Indiana, There’s a Reason For Low Turnout

Indiana’s Civic Health is poor. A number of studies and media reports confirm that–among other “civic deficits,” Hoosier election turnout is among the lowest of any of the states. As the linked article notes,

Indiana ranks among the lowest states in the country in civic participation. Groups from across the state met at the Indiana Civics Summit this week and hope to work together to boost civic engagement and increase voter turnout.

Much of the discussion at the summit was framed around the results of this year’s 2023 Indiana Civic Health Index. The report measures civic health by analyzing data about voting and voter registration, social and community connectedness, and civic awareness and action.

Indiana ranks close to last in the country in several categories measured by the report, especially those related to voting. Bill Moreau of the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation said these data points are a big problem.

“The civic health of Indiana is really pretty poor. Let’s just say it,” he said.

Moreau added that the report most recently listed Indiana as one of the states with the lowest voter turnout during midterm election years. The report compared Indiana to the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.

“This report, which is based upon 2022 election returns, has us ranked 50th for turnout,” Moreau said. “But we’re not last. Thank goodness for West Virginia, or we would be.”

Count me among the voices that have routinely echoed into the wilderness of civic indifference, begging students and readers to “do their duty” and cast their votes. But deep down, I’ve understood the truth of what the editor of the Indiana Capital Chronicle recently wrote–the reason so many Hoosiers don’t bother to go to the polls is because their votes really don’t count.

I’ve previously posted about an unsettling exchange some years back with a graduate student in my Law and Policy class. He was one of my best students, and he’d displayed a civic temperament and real interest in policy. I’d been exhorting students in the class to vote in an upcoming election, and he raised his hand. When I called on him, he explained that he’d recently moved to a bedroom community, had gone online to check his polling place, then looked at the ballot. There were zero competitive races–he’d confronted a Soviet-like ballot showing a single candidate for each position. He asked “Professor, why should I bother to vote?”

I had no answer.

As Oseye Boyd wrote in the Capital Chronicle,

The cold, hard truth is sometimes your vote doesn’t matter — or that’s how it feels.

It’s not just voter suppression efforts such as gerrymandering where cracking and packing diminish voices and feed apathy, but it’s also gatekeeping by political parties that creates few choices, making it harder for voters to see why they should care.

Boyd referenced–among other elements of Hoosier undemocratic processes–“the change in state law that raises the bar to prove party affiliation has made it more difficult for newcomers such as Graves to break into politics and challenge the incumbent.”

Before 2022, you only had to vote in one recent primary to prove your party affiliation. Now, a potential candidates’ two most recent primary votes have to match the party they wish to represent. If you don’t meet this requirement, county party chairs can allow you to run by issuing a waiver. “Can” being the operative word. Without clear guidelines on waiver issuance, the decision is left to the whims of party chairs in each county, creating a hodgepodge of reasons for approving or denying waivers….

Now, only five of the 23 Marion County legislative races in the upcoming primary are competitive. That’s it. Five. The incumbents in the other 18 districts will win no matter what. Let’s be real, races without competition are boring and uninspiring. Candidates bring out their A game when there’s competition. Our political system should encourage public service not discourage it by creating arbitrary obstacles…

We can’t keep chastising those who don’t vote without acknowledging there’s a system that seems to only want a few people participating.

Don’t believe me? Look at the number of people who voted in Marion County’s last two primaries; it’s quite sad. In 2023, 12.74% or 79,156 people out of 621,384 registered voters cast a ballot. In 2022, 10.78% or 73,086 people voted in that primary. The number of registered voters was 678,067.

It’s impossible to dispute her contention that the way to get more people to vote is to give them something to vote for.

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What “Let the States Decide” Ignores

There are a number of legal and practical objections to Republicans’ recent, deeply misleading efforts to convince Americans that leaving abortion restrictions to the states is a “moderate” position. The most obvious is that fundamental constitutional liberties are just that–fundamental. Legislators don’t get to vote on whether to allow freedom of speech or religion within their states (a good thing, if you live in places like Indiana, where the GOP super-majority would undoubtedly limit those civil liberties).

Practical objections are numerous: legislative bodies are conspicuously devoid of medical expertise, and ideological lawmakers have demonstrated that they have no understanding of the real-world complexities of the decisions involved; laws that require women to travel long distances for critical medical care discriminate against low-income patients…Most of you reading this post can supply a number of others.

But it wasn’t until I read a recent opinion essay in the New York Times that I had a small epiphany: leaving the issue to the states–despite the pious rhetoric emphasizing voting– is also profoundly anti-democratic, and not just in states like Indiana where citizens lack access to initiatives and/or referenda. Successful gerrymandering–partisan redistricting–ensures that “the people” lack the means to make such decisions.

As Jamelle Bouie writes:

Nearly everywhere Republicans hold power, they fight to rewire the institutions of government in the hope that they will then generate the desired result: more and greater Republican power.

And so we have the North Carolina Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican majorities, the Ohio Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican supermajorities, the Florida Legislature gerrymandered to produce Republican supermajorities, and the Florida Supreme Court overhauled to secure and uphold Republican priorities.

The states’ rights case for determining abortion access — let the people decide — falters on the fact that in many states, the people cannot shape their legislature to their liking. Packed and split into districts designed to preserve Republican control, voters cannot actually dislodge anti-abortion Republican lawmakers. A pro-choice majority may exist, but only as a shadow: present but without substance in government.

Polling on the issue of abortion proves his point. Even in deep Red states, pro-choice voters outnumber forced birth supporters by considerable margins, as we’ve seen in states like Kansas and Kentucky where voters have the means to mount constitutional referendums.

In states that lack those mechanisms, as Bouie notes, Republican legislators or jurists unwilling to concede to majority opinion (or constitutional precedent) can respond with the dead hand of the past.

Both the federal courts and the Arizona Supreme Court have conjured a past that smothers the right to bodily autonomy. Anti-abortion activists are also trying to conjure a past, in the form of the long-dormant Comstock Act, that gives government the power to regulate the sexual lives of its citizens. As Moira Donegan notes in a column for The Guardian, “Comstock has come to stand in, in the right-wing imagination, for a virtuous, hierarchically ordered past that can be restored in a sexually repressive and tyrannically misogynistic future.”

This effort may well fail, but the drive to leash the country to an imagined vision of a reactionary past should be seen as a silent confession of weakness. The same is true, for that matter, of the authoritarian dreams of the former president and his allies and acolytes….

Put a bit differently, a confident political movement does not fight to dominate; it works to persuade. It does not curate a favorable electorate or frantically burrow itself into our counter-majoritarian institutions; it competes for power on an even playing field, assured of its appeal and certain of its ability to win. It does not hide its agenda or shield its plans from public view; it believes in itself and its ideas.

That last paragraph is a succinct description of where we are as a nation right now. In far too many states, very much including my own state of Indiana, the GOP has “curated a favorable electorate.” Republicans have also benefitted mightily from counter-majoritarian institutions that have bestowed extra electoral clout on rural voters and low-density populations.

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of my periodic rants about the pernicious and anti-democratic effects of gerrymandering, but I didn’t understand until I read this essay that the practice is also an essential tool for depriving American citizens of their bodily autonomy and other civil liberties.

Gerrymandering is a critical part of the effort to return America to the past of GOP wet dreams…..

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The 50-State Strategy

Remember Howard Dean’s introduction of the 50-state strategy? Dean insisted that Democrats needed to contest seats in every single state–even in states like Indiana, where gerrymandering has given the GOP a vise-like, if arguably illegitimate, hold on governance.

Dean was right.

In a recent Substack newsletter, Robert Hubbell quoted a woman named Jess Piper, who had taken that advice to heart, and had run in a Missouri state legislative race. In 2022, approximately 44% of the Missouri state legislative races had been uncontested, i.e., no Democratic candidate. Jess decided to run for the state’s legislature in District 22 .

Hubbell quoted Piper’s analysis about that experience.

I did not win. I got my butt kicked by a man who is very nice, but who ran on two issues: making sure his grandkids had access to guns and making sure they didn’t have to eat plant-based, meat-substitute burgers. I’m not kidding…here is an article.

But Piper definitely did not consider the experience to have been a waste of time and money. Far from it.

So what did happen? I made the GOP nominee spend money. I made him show up to town halls and forums to debate me. I made him knock doors. I made him call voters. I made him talk about abortion and school funding and roads and hospitals when all he wanted to talk about was Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID masking.

I knew my chances, but by God I knew I was going to make my opponent work for the seat rather than just handing him an uncontested victory and a trip to Jefferson City. I didn’t relent and he couldn’t avoid talking about the things that matter.

And there’s this: what happens when you make the GOP spend money in a mostly Republican voting district? They can’t spend it chipping away at mostly Democratic voting districts. The GOP has to drop money into rural races that they haven’t had to think about for decades.

As Hubbell went on to point out, Jess’s run for office was equal parts offense and defense. “Her chances of success were long, but the fact that she put up a fight may have helped a Democrat in another district win. The importance of that fact cannot be overstated.”

What too many Democrats in Red states overlook is that the absence of a contest–for city council, for the state legislature, for other local races–is an incredibly effective vote suppressor. I have previously shared a conversation I had with a graduate student a few years ago; an election was coming up, and I did my usual “sermonizing” about the importance of voting. I asked for a show of hands–how many of you are registered? How many of you will definitely vote? Then one of my better students raised his hand. “Professor, I’ve always voted, but I now live in Noblesville. I went online to confirm that my polling place hadn’t changed, and then I looked at the ballot. There are no contested races. Why should I vote?”

In his small, Red town, no one had bothered to be a Jess Piper, so there was no incentive for Democrats–or for that matter, Republicans– to turn out.

An analysis of Indiana’s politics suggests that if turnout increased substantially in supposedly “safe” districts, some number of those districts wouldn’t be safe. The process of gerrymandering, after all, relies on previous turnout figures. Add to that the fact that rural areas–at least in Indiana–are rapidly losing population, and many progressive urban folks are moving to small towns that are effectively suburbs of Indianapolis, like Danville and Noblesville.

For too many years, Indiana’s Democrats–like those in Missouri– have given up in advance. Legislative districts are left uncontested, and Democratic campaign contributions are sent to candidates in other states, where the donor thinks there’s a better chance of that candidate winning.

It’s a self-defeating attitude and it creates a reinforcing cycle of negativity.

In his newsletter, Hubbell also gave a shout-out to a group called Every State Blue. The organization’s website underscores the message:

When we don’t run and support Democrats, the people living in those districts feel abandoned, ignored… forgotten. Meanwhile, GOP nominees get free passes.

Every State Blue knows there’s a better way. Working together, we can show up, make sure no Democrat is left behind … no voter is left without a choice … and no Republican gets a free ride.

When the only races being contested are the ones the party pooh-bas think there’s a chance of winning, Democrats have already lost. Worse, they’ve defeated themselves.

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Indiana’s Autocratic-And Delusional–Legislature

The most positive thing I can say about Indiana’s just-departed legislature is that at least it was a short session.

I have yet to address one of the most offensive bills passed by our legislative overlords: Senate Enrolled Act 202, which presumes to overrule accepted academic standards and procedures in the name of “intellectual diversity.” As numerous professors and other educators have pointed out, the bill is a thinly-veiled effort to combat what its proponents believe is “liberal bias” in higher education. (Unfortunately, as a popular meme proclaims, facts have a well-known liberal bias.)

The bill aims to emulate Ron DeSantis’ war against education and “wokeness”–turning Indiana into Florida, but without the water and sunshine.

Actually, as faculty and students overwhelmingly and unsuccessfully argued, in addition to having a chilling effect on free expression, the proposal is first and foremost an effort to micromanage Indiana’s higher education institutions. And that effort highlights the most prominent characteristic of our legislature’s Republican super-majority: its unbelievable hubris.

Hubris is defined as “excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.” It comes from the Greek, and denotes an excess of ambition and self-regard that ultimately causes the transgressor’s ruin. It is the overwhelming trait of the Republicans who control Indiana’s Statehouse.

Do Indianapolis citizens want public transportation? Our legislative overlords will restrict the kinds of transit for which we can tax ourselves (no light rail, for reasons that escape most of us). If we are finally allowed to proceed, self-appointed mavens in the legislature will overrule transit experts on issues of implementation.

Did the City-County Council pass a tax to support special needs in the city’s mile square? The legislature will tell them who can and cannot be subjected to that tax. (Gotta protect those political donors…)

The same hubris that is evident when the legislature routinely overrules local government decisions about transit, taxes, puppy mills and plastic bags extends to the idiocy of Senate Enrolled Act 202.

As the Capital Chronicle recently described the Act:

Included are changes to institutions’ diversity-oriented positions and their policies for tenure, contract renewals, performance reviews and more. It also establishes new reporting and survey requirements based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.”

Garrison noted that, as part of Senate Enrolled Act 202, Indiana “is one of the few states” that now requires boards of trustees to establish diversity committees on our campuses.

Under the new law, those diversity committees must make recommendations promoting recruitment and retention of “underrepresented” students rather than the “minority students” specified in current law….

The law additionally requires institutions to establish complaint procedures in which school students and staff can accuse faculty members and contractors of not meeting free-expression criteria.

Institutions will have to refer those complaints to human resource professionals and supervisors “for consideration in employee reviews and tenure and promotion decisions,” according to the law.

From a legal standpoint, I would argue that language in the bill is unconstitutionally vague, but of course, that’s the point.

It is glaringly clear that the intent of the measure is to warn professors who might be advancing “liberal” ideas that they are jeopardizing their tenure. Of course, what constitutes a “liberal” classroom lecture and a lack of “intellectual diversity” is pretty subjective–and in our current political environment, subject to constant change. If a biology professor teaches evolution and fails to give equal time to creationism, has she failed to be “intellectually diverse”? Is a professor teaching about the Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage prohibited from agreeing with its reasoning?

And about that encouraging of complaints….

When I taught, it was abundantly clear that most students who filed complaints against my colleagues were students who got poor grades. (I didn’t get any official complaints, but one student did sue me in Small Claims court for giving him a B-, a grade that was actually a gift. He lost.)

There is much more that is truly horrible about Senate Enrolled Act 202, but what is even more troubling than its content is that its passage represents the majority’s hubris and lack of self-awareness. Someone needs to tell these self-important examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect that election to the Indiana Statehouse (courtesy of gerrymandering) is not a grant of authority to rule everything in Indiana.

At some level, Indiana lawmakers must recognize that they’re on thin ice–why else would they adamantly refuse to extend the hours our polls are open, or allow citizen referenda or nonpartisan redistricting?

Until Indiana’s weak, ineffective Democratic Party is able to run credible candidates in every one of Indiana’s gerrymandered districts, Hoosiers will continue to inhabit an autocracy governed by culture-war know-nothings with wildly inflated self-images.

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If Only…

There are so many reasons to vote straight Blue this November: to keep a dangerously insane man out of the Oval Office, to remove the “God Squad” from the House and Senate, to protect democracy and Separation of Church and State…and especially, to send an emphatic message that women will not meekly return to second-class citizenship.

You can undoubtedly come up with other reasons as well. But a bill just filed by the Democrats in the U.S. Senate may be the most important, because its passage would go a very long way to accomplishing several of those goals–and it won’t pass unless Democrats sweep the November election.

Per The Democracy Docket:

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) introduced the Redistricting Reform Act of 2024, legislation that would make a slew of impactful changes to the congressional redistricting process nationwide.

The bill would set spell out comprehensive criteria for congressional redistricting including:

Banning partisan gerrymandering by prohibiting drawing maps that favor or disfavor any political party,

Ensuring compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

Providing an explicit right for private citizens to file legal challenges under this law,

Requiring that districts be drawn to represent communities of interest and neighborhoods to the extent possible,

Barring people, legislatures and states from asserting legislative privilege over lawsuits brought under the act,

Setting clear deadlines for when maps must be enacted and

Mandating that redistricting plans are subject to public comment in an open and transparent manner

Gerrymandering is the root of America’s current dysfunctions. When lawmakers can choose their voters rather than the other way around, we end up being ruled by a minority.

Gerrymandering–aka partisan redistricting–does more than skew election results. A lot more. And much of it goes unrecognized. Here in Indiana, for example, where partisan redistricting has carved up metropolitan areas and subordinated them to rural ones, gerrymandering has given us distribution formulas favoring rural areas over cities when divvying up dollars for roads and schools, among other inequities.

Even before the Dobbs decision, The Guardian connected gerrymandering to passage of radical abortion laws.

Georgia’s legislature responded to the state’s closely divided political climate not with thoughtful compromise but by passing one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States.

An April poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 70% of Georgians support the landmark Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion. The new state ban is opposed by 48% of Georgians and supported by only 43%. So why would the legislature enact such an extreme measure?

For that matter, why would Ohio, Alabama, Missouri and other states establish similar “fetal heartbeat” laws that are far more restrictive than their constituents support?

One important answer is gerrymandering: redistricting voting districts to give the party in power an edge – making it almost impossible for the other side to win a majority of seats, even with a majority of votes. Sophisticated geo-mapping software and voluminous voter data turned this ancient art into a hi-tech science when the US redistricted after the 2010 census.

Partisan redistricting is undemocratic no matter which party is doing it, but give credit where it’s due: the GOP has been far more adept at gerrymandering than the Democrats (probably because Republicans recognize that they are increasingly a minority party and must cheat in order to win). As the Guardian reported, gerrymandering has allowed the GOP to control state legislatures with supermajorities even when voters prefer Democratic candidates by hundreds of thousands of votes.

Gerrymandering nullifies elections and insulates lawmakers from democratic accountability.

Despite lacking any mandate for an extreme agenda in a closely divided nation, Republican lawmakers have pushed through new voting restrictions, anti-labor laws, the emergency manager bill that led to poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, and now, these strict abortion bans. Electorally, there’s little that Democrats can do to stop it.

In Ohio, the article pointed to “zero evidence” that voters held extreme opinions on abortion, and noted that polls showed more voters opposed to that state’s “heartbeat” bill than supportive of it. A University of Chicago study showed that barely half the total vote in Ohio gave Republicans more than 63% of the seats– simply because the maps were “surgically designed” to ensure that few seats would be competitive.

I have frequently posted about the multiple negative consequences of gerrymandering: among other things, it empowers extremists (as “real” elections move to the primaries) and suppresses the vote.

In non-referendum states like Indiana, the only way to get rid of gerrymandering would be via a U.S. Supreme Court decision or a federal law. The Court has repeatedly declined to act, so we need a Democratic win in November big enough to ensure passage of the Redistricting Reform Act.

That would go a long way toward protecting democracy–and women.

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