Extremism lost, moderation won, but “Gerrymandering” remained

To begin with, let me explain that “Gerrymandering” is an electoral trap, preserved for two centuries, to manipulate the 435 electoral districts that exist in the United States. Yes, exactly the 435 districts represented by each one of the “representatives” or federal deputies that make up the Lower House of the Federal Congress. This manipulation of the electoral process results in a trap that is hard for people to perceive but exists so that politicians choose their constituents, instead of the voters choosing their politicians.

let me explain

State legislatures manipulate the physical distribution of districts to choose the most favorable populations for their politicians. And like everything in the United States continues to be strongly influenced by racial differences, districts are drawn to, for example, remove non-white populations from a white candidate and leave him only with the voters who are most likely to sympathize with him and his ideas.

This, through ancient and recent history, has already given rise to the fact that the districts in each state of the country instead of, locally, imitating the square or rectangular shape that the states have on a national map, end up with capriciously shaped districts. on your state map, creating political districts that geographically resemble a “salamander.” In this way, state legislatures improve the chances that elections will be won by whoever they want to favor, be they ethnic, religious or political groups.

A governor of the state of Massachusetts called Elbridge Gerry, around the year 1812, invented this type of manipulation. Over time the name Gerry was attached to the word “Salamander”, and what resulted is the term we know today as “gerrymandering”.

Every 10 years state legislatures use data from the latest census to redraw electoral districts in each of the 50 states.

As you have just read, these tricks began in 1812 and 210 years later they are still happening. Look at a map of the United States, there are more states governed by Republicans than by Democrats, and although the Democrats manipulate the same, the Republicans have been more talented in managing voter populations, and since there are more Republican state legislatures, that party is the one that dominates nationally, and therefore has more influence in Washington as well.

Make no mistake about it, in this past election “Gerrymandering” was part of the equation. Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is accused of manipulating his entire state in this way. Democrats are also accused of going too far in favor of their politicians in New York state.

But before reviewing those states, take a look at the current horror of what is happening in the state of Texas, where the white population, which is 40% of the total, dominates the Latino population, in this case Mexican American, it is 39%.

What happen? That Texan electoral districts today continue to be artificially shaped to create a white representation that amounts to 61%. This leaves only 18% of the Latino population as politically active.

How does this manipulate the vote in Texas? What a good question!

The influence of the huge Latino or Mexican American population is put into districts in whimsical ways where the majority of the district’s population ends up being white.

As a result, Mexican Americans in Texas lose all their political strength, and maintain it only in border areas where the white population has a minimal presence anyway.

Gerrymandering in the Democratic states

Throughout the United States in this 2022 there was a rearrangement of electoral districts. In the state of New York, these new political frontiers will now affect one of the congresswomen with the greatest national visibility, and with the greatest number of political enemies. Alexandra Ocasio Cortes, in district number 14, will have a district with a different population than the one that elected her in 2018. The redistribution in the Bronx and Queens will take away 302,344 voters who today see her as their political idol, and will add 329,291 who don’t know her and who might not have any interest in voting for her now.

Another example, Congressman Jim Jordan’s District 4 in Ohio, has been preserved in his whimsical way. Jordan is one of the fiercest far-right leaders and fighters in Congress. Everyone knows his district as “the duck district” because more than being a rectangle, it seems to be the image of a duck drawn on the state map.

In May 2019, a Federal Appeals Court panel of three federal judges ruled that the map, not just for the 4th district, but for all of Ohio’s congressional districts, represented a constitutional violation because they were subject to “election rigging.” “. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 makes it illegal to redraw a district to disparage the residents of a district from their representation based on racial differences.

The state of Alabama also redrawed its entire territory to put its entire African-American population in one district, which is shocking and wildly insulting for a country that has a democratic system.

The worst part of all this is that the United States Supreme Court has meddled in an issue that is political and with its rulings has used a legal activism that is totally inappropriate.

What about the Supreme Court? Another great question!

The very conservative and pro-right Republican US Supreme Court stepped in as an arbitrator and ruled, in the Alabama case, with ramifications in Ohio and other states, that lower courts could not review allegations of electoral rigging, nor could they they could be part of the arguments about the limits of the districts.

With this ruling, the highest court in the land struck down the appeals court order that had already ordered those maps of Alabama to be thrown away and new maps drawn to restore the political rights of African-American voters. The Court of Appeals ruling stipulates that “African-Americans were given less opportunity to choose their representatives than other Alabama residents.”

The Supreme Court’s pretext was that “there was no longer time for the states to change the political division of their districts.” Consequently, the five conservative justices said, the states must wait until after the 2022 election.

You must remember that of the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three were appointed to that court by Donald Trump. Obviously with his ruling, the judges made us suspect that they too expected this November 8 election to be affected by the famous “red wave” that never happened.

In the end, in the recent midterm election, four states: Ohio, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia, ended up using maps of political electoral districts that the courts had declared illegal.

In that election reason won. The moderates pushed back the extremists and that is why the huge “red tide” never came. But that does not mean that democracy is restored and that it is already pure throughout the United States.

But now you, at least, know where lies in this democracy… the Sin of the original cheating.