Partisan Gerrymandering and Election Laws

One of the top news items in the last few weeks, and sure to be continued into early 2022, has been the challenges to the partisan gerrymandering of new Congressional voting district alignments in many states following the publication of the 2020 census results.

The drawing of voting district lines by either party in majority control of a state's legislature, to provide a structural advantage for the majority party in state legislatures in elections for the future decade, is an undemocratic action taken regularly by both parties. Reuters in 2020 determined that only 43 of the 435 Congressional districts, just 1 in 10, are actually electorally competitive. In the balance of the over 400 districts, state legislatures have rigged the voting district alignments so that the minority party has essentially little to no chance of winning an election. This is one reason why over 90% of the incumbent Congress officials are re-elected every 2 years; they most often do not face a truly fair competitive election.

In addition, and more dangerously to our democracy, several state legislatures have recently passed laws to replace the non-partisan management of the outcomes of elections by bi-partisan citizen volunteers and professional election officials, with control by the majority party in the legislature. Under these new laws, it will be partisan legislators who will decide the outcome of elections and either certify or invalidate the results from separate election precincts. Some of the laws do not require any proof of an impropriety in how the elections were handled or any fraud or impropriety in the election results for the partisan legislature to throw out the votes of the citizens and change the election outcome.

If you don't see this as a serious problem for our democracy, think of those citizens in the minority party in those 400 Congressional districts where there is often no opposing candidate because of the "stacked deck" in favor of the majority party. Might there be a natural detachment from political issues and even from voting? If you're OK with the one party governing that results from gerrymandering, let me ask you to consider where in human history one party governing has resulted in a prosperous society with rights for all citizens? Aren't Communist countries, like Russia, China, and North Korea one party governments? Wasn't Nazi Germany a one party government? Do you know of any examples of one party governments that protected the basic rights of all their citizens?

Partisanship and the competition between parties for absolute control over government without needing to compromise with the other party, is not a new concern. Our first Vice President and second President, John Adams, shared his concerns about the risk to our brand new Constitutional Republic within months of completing the draft of our Constitution:

“There is nothing which I dread as much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the largest political evil under our Constitution.”

--- JOHN ADAMS, letter to Jonathan Jackson, October 2, 1789

There is no part of the Constitution that forbids the favoring of one party unfairly in elections over another, and the Supreme Court has generally declined to review legal challenges to politically gerrymandered voting district maps. In fact, the word “party” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, perhaps thanks to John Adams. Yet today, partisanship is the major corrupting influence undermining the reflection of the unbiased will of the people in our elections, our politics and in our ability to address the problems of the country overall. This is hardly consistent with the principles our Founders expressed in creating and passing on to our generation: a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Those challenges to our Founding principles probably won’t be addressed effectively by a divisive and dysfunctional Congress either. So it will likely fall to the citizens to take action to protect the core elements of our representative democracy from the dangerous influences of partisan gerrymandering and retain the non-partisan management of our electoral processes.

In my book, "American Turning Point: Repairing and Restoring Our Constitutional Republic", I have proposed 16 changes to how government operates. These changes are designed to minimize or eliminate the corrupt influences of partisanship and career self-interest, and replace these influences with a greater commitment in our elected leaders to serving the county. These changes are called “Citizen Rules” and are designed to preserve the principles of democracy and the values of our Constitutional Republic.

The book further defines 6 Amendments to the Constitution that would activate the 16 Citizen Rules in how our government operates. The Amendments, called “The Bill of Public Service and Accountability”, would provide Constitutional requirements that voting district alignments should be free of any partisan or other bias, and state election laws should result in equality of access for all citizens to voter registration and voting processes. To enforce this standard, Congress would be required to establish a non-partisan CITIZEN Commission to oversee the fairness and lack of partisan or other bias, in voting district alignments, and in registration and voting processes for elections. State legislatures would be specifically prohibited from having any authority to change the votes of the citizens as tabulated and certified by the State’s election officials. The only role would be to call for bi-partisan audits of election results and investigations of election fraud concerns. But the determination of any fraud that calls for changes to certified election results would require the determination of facts and evidence by a court, not by legislators without evidence that can be accepted as relevant in a court.

Thus, the problems in biased partisan law making in the area of voting district alignments and election processes would be eliminated and prohibited by clear and unbiased Constitutional requirements that favor neither party. Rule #13 of the “”Citizen Rules” requires that Congress establish an independent, non-partisan Federal Election Oversight Board of ordinary citizens, with authority to oversee the Congressional voting district alignments in each state and to require changes to any map that are judged to result in biased configurations favoring either party or disfavoring any minority.

This would remove the ability of either political party when in the majority to corrupt the basic tenants of our democracy and Constitutional Republic: the right of citizen votes to fairly and without bias determine the outcome of elections. It is more important to our democracy that these issues be corrected by Congress ensuring that state election laws avoid partisan bias and ensure an equality outcome for all citizens, rather than prescribing the details of specific registration and election tactics.

A summary of the details of all 16 “Citizen Rules” are provided on the book’s website at www.citizenrules.org. Comments and/or questions can be sent from the website, and direct email contact with me is also provided. Citizens who seek solutions that can preserve and defend our Constitutional principles should visit the website and consider purchasing and reading the details in the book.