Tag Archives: gerrymandering

The Politics Of Lying

When I was teaching, Free Speech discussions would frequently evoke a question from students appalled by the massive amounts of disinformation enabled by the Internet and social media: “Can’t we at least outlaw lying?” I would have to explain that courts would have great difficulty determining the difference between what is a lie and what is a mistake, etc. The practical problems of such an effort would be insurmountable.

More to the point, the First Amendment rests on reliance upon the “marketplace of ideas.” Bad ideas and lies are to be countered by better ideas and facts. It is a theory that depends upon the participation of We the People.

It isn’t working very well right now, and I see no simple solutions. Neither does Bill Adair, who founded Politifact. In a recent essay for the Atlantic, he explored the failure of that fact-checking site to combat the firehose of propaganda and lies that  distort our political lives.

For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work. (A typical insult: “The fact-checkers are basically just a P.R. arm of the Democrats at this point.”) PolitiFact and other media organizations published thousands of checks, but as time went on, Republican representatives and voters alike ignored our journalism more and more, or dismissed it. Democrats sometimes did too, of course, but they were more often mindful of our work and occasionally issued corrections when they were caught in a falsehood.

After exploring some theories about why politicians lie–the calculus that they apparently apply to determine the ratio of risk to reward– Adair notes that today’s extreme political polarization encourages them to do little else.

Now that many politicians speak primarily to their supporters, lying has become both less dangerous and more rewarding. “They gain political favor or, ultimately, they gain election,” said Mike McCurry, who served as White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. As former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey told me, “It’s human nature to want to get a standing ovation.” Lies also provide easy ammunition for attacking opponents—no opposition research required. They “take points off the board for other candidates,” said Damon Circosta, a Democrat who recently served as the chair of North Carolina’s Board of Elections.

Adair notes that partisan media, especially on the right, fosters lying by degrading our shared sense of what’s real. These outlets expect politicians to repeat favored falsehoods as the price of admission. If you’re not willing to participate in the twisting of facts, you simply won’t get to speak to the echo chamber.

Tim Miller, a former Republican operative who left the party in 2020, pointed out that gerrymandering, particularly in red states, has made it so “most of the voters in your district are getting their information from Fox, conservative talk radio … and so you just have this whole bubble of protection around your lies in a way that wouldn’t have been true before, 15 years ago.”

Adair uses Mike Pence as an example of the way today’s political incentives change people. They had been neighbors when Pence was in Congress, and Adair saw him then as “a typical politician who would occasionally shade the truth.” When he was Indiana governor, Adair watched his lies grow. “By the time he became Donald Trump’s vice president, he was almost unrecognizable to me.”

The question, of course, is “what can we do?” Here are Adair’s closing paragraphs:

If politicians lie because they believe they’ll score more points than they’ll lose, we have to change the calculus. Tech and media companies need to create incentives for truth-telling and deterrents for lying. Platforms of all kinds could charge higher ad rates to candidates who have the worst records among fact-checkers. Television networks could take away candidates’ talking time during debates if they’re caught lying.

But these reforms will demand more than just benign corporate intervention. They’ll need broad, sustained public support. Voters may not be willing to place truthfulness over partisan preference in every case. But more will have to start caring about lies, even when their candidate is the culprit.

Amen.

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We Need More Of This

Anyone remember Howard Dean and his fifty-state plan? Dean was a 2004 presidential candidate, and is remembered primarily for his insistence that Democrats should run candidates everywhere–that failing to mount campaigns even in heavily gerrymandered districts that were sure losers was a strategic error.

I agreed with Dean then, and I’m even more convinced of the wisdom of his advice now. As I’ve repeatedly noted, gerrymandering is a vote suppression tactic. Failure to even offer an alternative candidate is participation in that suppression.

For a long time, most voters remained unaware of the effects of gerrymandering (for that matter, most voters remain unaware of the extent to which America’s obsolete electoral systems subvert democracy). Raising that awareness is the first step toward countering and correcting those systems, so I was encouraged to read about a campaign in North Carolina recently profiled in the Washington Post.

The article was titled “She’s running with all she’s got for a seat she can’t win. That’s the point.”

Kate Barr is a blur of activity on the campaign trail this fall. She’s a fixture at local Democratic events, delivering fiery stump speeches. In her neighborhood here in the North Carolina Piedmont, many lawns display her Barbie-pink yard signs. She has branded T-shirts and sweatshirts and glittery stickers.

Wherever she appears, her opening salvo is always the same: “Hi. I’m Kate Barr. And I’m your losing candidate for state Senate District 37.”

Barr’s campaign is making a serious point: aggressive gerrymandering erases competitive elections and leaves voters without a real choice. North Carolina is a competitive state. It has a Democratic governor. But thanks to gerrymandering, it has a Republican super-majority in its legislature. (This will sound familiar to Indiana voters…) During the last round of redistricting, the legislature redrew Barr’s previous district, marrying the suburban area she lived in with a reliably rural, Red district. (Again, Indiana residents can relate…)

Davidson went from being part of a district centered in Mecklenburg County — where Donald Trump lost by 35 percentage points in 2020 — to being part of Iredell, which he won by about the same amount.

“Why am I losing?” Barr asked, warming up the crowd at a community center in her district ahead of a campaign appearance by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein one recent day. “In a gerrymandered state like North Carolina, it means representatives are choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives.”

The article concedes that Barr’s decision to build her entire campaign around certain defeat is “unconventional,” noting that–among other things–she sells a “LOSER” T-shirt on her campaign website. But it also notes that–shades of Howard Dean!– “the strategy of running Democrats in districts in which they are sure to be beaten has spread across the country after decades of ceding state legislative races to Republicans.”

Both parties draw district lines to their partisan advantage — a tactic known as gerrymandering. But about twice as many state legislatures overly favor Republicans compared with Democrats, according to a 2023 study by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Running “sure loser” candidates and giving the “sure loser” voters a reason to come to the polls has been shown to improve the performance of the top of the ticket. It makes the majority party spend time and money they wouldn’t otherwise have to spend. And if focuses on a result of gerrymandering that has been aptly called “a highway to extremism.” That’s because gerrymandering acts to magnify a state’s partisan advantage.

The effect has been on particularly vivid display in some red states in recent years as legislators who have little to fear from a general election pass laws that are to the right of what their voters might support, experts say. Reproductive rights restrictions, school book bans and voting limitations have gone largely unchecked at the ballot box. Meanwhile, policies with wide support, like certain anti-gun violence laws, have gone nowhere.

You can see that extremism in Barr’s sure-to-win opponent.

Barr’s opponent, incumbent state senator Vickie Sawyer, who ran unopposed in 2022, has supported policies such as North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban — which was enacted after the legislature overrode the governor’s veto — and constraints on discussing sexual orientation in elementary schools. At a recent forum on aging, Sawyer brought up unprompted her support for a bill that would require sheriffs to detain undocumented immigrants who have been charged with a crime, even if they have made bail — “so they can’t kill our children,” she said.

Sawyer sounds a lot like the culture warriors in Indiana’s legislature.

The good news for Hoosiers is that statewide candidates can’t be gerrymandered. The current GOP statewide candidates are  worse than Sawyer, but they can–and must– be defeated.

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Why Democracy Is At Risk

The punditry keeps telling us that democracy is at risk. There’s a reason why that is.

Yes, Donald J. Trump (aka “the former guy”) poses an existential risk to American democracy. But let’s be honest– crazy Donald and Project 2025 are only threats because of the actual, underlying reason for the erosion of our democratic processes: the systemic distortions that continue to promote minority rule.

I have used this platform to pontificate about several of those distortions, from the Electoral College (hugely undemocratic) to the current form of the filibuster (significantly undemocratic), but especially (and yes, repeatedly) gerrymandering.

In one of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent Letters from an American, she explained more eloquently than I have the degree to which partisan redistricting–aka gerrymandering–mutes the voice of the electorate. As a result, I’m quoting her explanation at length.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction…. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system.

There is much more, and I encourage you to click through and read Richardson’s letter in its entirety–or, for that matter, if you are not now a subscriber, to become one. As a historian, she provides an illuminating historical context to the problems we face.

One of those problems is that, in a democracy, many voters–perhaps most—fail to recognize the immense importance of the systems within which We the People operate. Only when those systems operate to facilitate fair play and to provide a level playing field are the people we elect incentivized to heed the will of their constituents.

Richardson says there are two possible outcomes to today’s corrupted system: the election of Republicans who will follow the Project 2025 playbook, or a voters’ revolt sufficient to dislodge its beneficiaries and prompt reform of the cult that has replaced the GOP.

In November, we’ll know which of those outcomes we’ve chosen.

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Connecting The Dots

A few evenings ago, I introduced a Zoom meeting sponsored by ReCenter Indiana. It was focused upon the very negative effects of our legislative super-majority. Democrats have identified four districts in Indiana that–should they all go Blue in November–would reduce the current super-majority to a simple majority. My job was to begin the session with an explanation of how a legislative super-majority advances extremism and stifles democratic deliberation.

Here are those introductory remarks.

__________________

Let me begin this discussion by connecting some dots. Hoosier voters need to understand how partisan redistricting—usually referred to as gerrymandering–has given Indiana its legislative super-majority, and how that super-majority has given us increasingly extreme legislation: a virtually-complete abortion ban, education vouchers that are starving our public schools, gun laws that allow anyone who can fog a mirror to possess a lethal weapon– basically, a focus on culture war at the expense of attention to actual governance.

It’s a vicious circle, because in Indiana, the GOP’s legislative super-majority also allows the party to continue the extreme gerrymandering that has made Indiana one of the five most gerrymandered states in the country.

Gerrymandering has all sorts of undemocratic consequences, one of which is voter suppression. In districts perceived as “safe,” people who favor the “loser” party tend to stay home. That’s one reason why Indiana ranks 50th among the states in turnout. (Interestingly, due to Indiana’s population shifts, a number of those theoretically “safe” districts wouldn’t currently be safe if discouraged folks came out and voted. Those demographic shifts are one of the reasons there’s a chance this year to break the current GOP supermajority.)

Indiana is an excellent example of how the gerrymandering that leads to legislative super-majorities has a profound and very negative impact on policy.

We know that primaries attract the most ideologically extreme voters in either party. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, Republican incumbents protect their right flank, Democrats their left. In Indiana, which has been gerrymandered to produce more Republican districts, that reality has steadily moved us farther and farther Right. Today’s “culture warriors” win office in order to focus on issues like banning abortion, waging war on trans children, and removing common-sense restrictions on gun ownership. And it’s getting worse–there are indications that during the next session we’ll see the introduction of anti-vaccine measures that—if passed–would threaten public health. (For reasons I fail to understand, opposition to vaccination has become a preoccupation of what I’ll call the “Micah Beckwith wing” of the GOP.)

These are the pet issues of extremists, rather than the issues that most Hoosiers care about and that we traditionally consider governmental: roads and bridges and other infrastructure, crime and punishment, economic development.

Thanks to the gerrymandering that has given Republicans a super-majority, these extremist legislators face virtually no barriers to enacting measures that research tells us are deeply unpopular with most Hoosiers. Members of a super-majority don’t face pressure to negotiate, or to moderate the most extreme versions of their extreme positions.

A party with a super-majority also faces no obstacles to rewarding its donors and supporters; in Indiana, that has given us policies that almost uniformly favor the well-to-do. It has defeated even the most minimal efforts to protect renters. It has given us privatization programs like vouchers, in which our tax dollars are used almost exclusively by the well-to-do while impoverishing the public schools that serve poorer children, and it has given us what is arguably an unconstitutional effort to protect gun manufacturers from litigation.

That super-majority has also blocked more stringent ethics measures.

Any super-majority—Republican or Democrat—gives those in power the ability to ignore contending arguments, unpalatable data and the needs of Hoosiers likely to vote for the opposing party. They don’t need to negotiate or compromise. They don’t even need to look like they’re negotiating or compromising.

Indiana can’t get rid of the gerrymandering that makes our legislature’s extremism possible—we lack a referendum or initiative, mechanisms that have been used by other states to institute nonpartisan redistricting. In this state, only the legislature itself—only the people who benefit from the system—can change it. The only way Indiana will get rid of the gerrymandering that allows legislators to choose their voters rather than the other way around would be Congress passing the John Lewis act, which (among other very positive things) would make gerrymandering illegal nationally.

Since the GOP benefits from America’s gerrymandering far more than the Democrats do, passing the John Lewis Act would probably require a Democratic trifecta: a Democratic House and Senate to pass it and a Democratic President to sign it.
Until that happens, if it ever does, Indiana’s Republican gerrymandering is likely to continue giving Hoosiers a Republican legislative majority. But we do have a chance this year to defeat the super-majority, and to slow down our state’s march toward culture-war extremism. One reason is the shifting demography that I previously mentioned. Another is that the GOP has moved so far toward a very unconservative extremism that its candidates are turning off voters who previously voted Republican.

Those realities give four candidates in particular a better-than-usual chance to win their districts:
• Josh Lowry, District 24;
• Tiffany Stoner, District 25;
• Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and
• Matt McNally, District 39.

We’ll now hear from each of them.

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Shaking Up Indiana

Among the many negative consequences of Republican gerrymandering in Indiana is one that is rarely considered: it has  isolated and largely disenfranchised Southern Indiana’s rural voters. I will readily admit that I hadn’t considered that effect; instead, I’ve been focused on the way urban districts have been carved up and wedded to surrounding suburban and rural areas in order to disenfranchise urban voters.

I’ve now been educated.

A regular reader of this blog sent me a press release about an effort called the Indiana Rural Summit, described as a “Nine-Candidate Supergroup Shaking up Southern Indiana Politics for the Better.”

These nine Democratic candidates for the Indiana House have banded together and are taking their demands for legislation  benefiting rural voters on the road.  The candidates are kicking off a six-stop “event tour” at Jasper’s Strassenfest.

As the release explains:

The Indiana Rural Summit, nine Democratic State House candidates from districts that
represent 24% of Indiana across 22 counties, are rallying around a unified message of hope for
Hoosiers: Rural communities and small towns can have better healthcare, schools, and jobs.
Turning disempowering gerrymandered districts into a secret superpower, they are uniting to
spread this hopeful message to thousands of rural voters, too often left without a choice on the
ballot for state representative due to unopposed races.

“We care about local issues, and our concerns are deeply rooted in our love of family,
community, and the beauty of our region,” says Ryan Still, Monroe County Rural Engagement
Deputy Director and organizer for the Indiana Rural Summit. “The continued policies of
extraction and exploitation from our legislature has left us behind and silenced. Our current state
representatives prioritize corporate lobbyists and outside influencers over Hoosiers. We want
legislators who understand our concerns and refuse to sell us out. We want a state that works
for all of us, not just the wealthy few. We all want to live in communities that thrive.”

The Strassenfest is an annual  parade in the town of Jasper, and the Rural Summit candidates will be joined by Gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick and Attorney General candidate Destiny Wells. (The release also promises a performance by “German band Hungry5.”)

“Most of our districts are rural or artificially rural due to gerrymandering, keeping rural voters
isolated, unheard, and desperately misunderstood. Rarely are these voters asked about their
vision for Indiana by those elected to represent them,” explains Michelle Higgs, Indiana Rural
Summit member running for HD 60. (Monroe/Morgan/Johnson Counties). “Rural voters need a
seat at the table.”

The Indiana Rural Summit is using the very cause that isolates communities to unite and give
rural voters both a voice and an option. Unifying gerrymandered districts that share county
overlap, these nine candidates are turning gerrymandering into a regional coalition fighting for
regional solutions to improve rural Hoosiers’ quality of life. These solutions include better access
to comprehensive healthcare, to jobs with livable wages and benefits, to safe and
affordable housing, and to quality public education.

The effort being mounted by the candidates in the Rural Summit is significant for several reasons. It is certainly a welcome sign of life for rural Democrats, but its importance extends far beyond partisan concerns. Participants in the Rural Summit are making a profoundly important point: gerrymandering deprives all citizens–not just urban residents– of adequate representation.

I have previously noted that gerrymandering is by far the most effective form of voter suppression. In districts drawn to be “safe” for one party or another, voters who prefer the “loser” party disproportionately fail to cast their ballots, assuming their votes won’t matter. (Ironically, if all those discouraged folks actually did cast ballots, some of those districts wouldn’t be safe.)

The Rural Summit candidates are focusing on another consequence of those gerrymandered “safe” districts– the people elected from them have no incentive to actually represent their constituents. They assume they will be elected (or re-elected) in any event. Instead, their incentives are to do the bidding of the party bosses–the political figures who hand out plum committee assignments and direct the distribution of campaign dollars received from the special interests that wield enormous influence at Indiana’s statehouse.

As the press release reminds us, Indiana has the lowest voter turnout in the nation. It also has a large slate of unopposed races– currently, 26 House seats are uncontested.

These two facts are connected: The Indiana General Assembly creates voter suppression and
apathy through gerrymandering and blocking ballot initiatives, so they can pass embarrassingly
bad legislation.

The Indiana Rural Summit wants to empower disheartened voters across 22 counties and get them to the polls. Their success would benefit all Hoosiers currently disenfranchised by our legislative overlords.

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