Voting security is always a hot topic around election time, but manipulation of our electoral system is a bigger problem that we have to worry about all the time.
On the most recent episode of The Drill Down podcast, we are not talking about stolen ballots, “ballot harvesting,” or other shenanigans that can happen during an election, but about how congressional districts are both drawn and apportioned. Two things recently in the news raise questions about how we do those things, and whether it’s still the best way.
As host Peter Schweizer asks, “What if an election can be rigged before the first ballot is even cast?”
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently likened the drawing of “minority-majority” congressional districts to requiring accessibility for disabled people, arguing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) didn’t assume there was ongoing discrimination against people with disabilities, only that buildings had to fix it wherever possible. Likewise, she said, congressional districts that are drawn specifically to maximize minority group voting power need not show that those groups are currently discriminated against. Pressing the metaphor, she went as far as calling Black voters “disabled.”
Schweizer summed up the counterargument to minority-majority districts as: “We shouldn’t create an injustice now because of an injustice in the past.”
The High Court is set to rule on a case challenging congressional apportionment on racial grounds, which could set off a political shockwave. Schweizer explains that minority-majority districts are different from gerrymandering, which specifically tries to maximize the power of one political party, but since Black voters tend to vote for Democrats, it amounts to the same thing. The difference is written into the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required some states to create congressional districts in which Black voters dominated, to redress past Jim Crow — era discrimination in Southern states.
Hopefully, SCOTUS will strike it down…although I think it will be a 6-3 majority (hmmmm, wonder who the three wil be?). After that, Wicomico County should appeal the purely race-based redistricting requirement judgement. While I am NOT a big fan of the two At-Large seats, it is surely better than redistricting to add two more demoncrats – simply by race!
We have already seen the results of Affirmative Action in the White House – and the Biden-Appointed SCOTUS justice…
Great thoughts 12:18, Good to see we still have a few people with a brain and know how to use it.