Gerrymandering Their Way into the White House

The latest provocation angering Democrats these days is the suggestion that Republican legislatures in key swing states should change their method for awarding electors in the Electoral College to candidates in presidential elections.  It's reported that some are considering switching from a winner-take-all system to allocation by congressional district.  This can help Republicans win the White House because they've gerrymandered twice after the past two congressional redistricting adjustments in the years 2001 and 2011, when states reapportioned districts to compensate for changes in population.  In the decennial census years immediately preceding, Republicans swept many state elections, granting them timely power to control the process.

One person's vote should count the same as another's, but gerrymandering gives parties representation disproportionate to the numbers of voters who support them.  It's unconstitutional because it violates the principle of equal protection, preserving the form of democracy as a corpse with no soul.  Though technically illegal, it's very difficult to meet the high standards of proof required to win a suit against it and force a state to redraw the congressional map more fairly.  There is no universal judicial standard to prove partisan effect.  It's not impossible to win a case against it, but it's a tough row to hoe.

To see how effective gerrymandering can be, we need not look beyond the election of 2012.  Today, Republicans are the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives even though, in the last election, Democratic candidates for the House out-polled Republicans by almost a million and a half votes.  Allotting electors by gerrymandered congressional districts will give Republican votes undue weight in the Electoral College, thereby doing for the presidency what they did with Congress.  If states that Obama had won in spite of their Republican legislatures had used an elector-per-district plan instead of the winner-take-all system that most states use today, then Governor Mitt Romney would have been inaugurated last week even though he lost the popular vote by five million.  That's why Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is urging it on those blue states with Republican legislatures - the very ones that made the difference for Obama last year.

However (and this is important because it shows further motive), Republican success at gerrymandering has evolved into a case of "be careful what you wish for" because it tends to exaggerate their flaws.  Incumbent Republican representatives, now unafraid of Democratic challengers because of their gerrymandered advantage, are anxious about intraparty challenges on their right flank instead.  It pushes them into extreme positions on just about any subject from rape and abortion to opposing any tax increase even if the country is in extreme deficit, and to wild statements about their ideological opponents being evil incarnate.  It's creating a new, unforeseen problem for them: Republicans are becoming increasingly unpopular because succeeding rounds of purity tests and purges in primary elections have produced a band of unyielding zealots.

Prospects are grim for Republicans because their party and national opinion trends are parting ways, so now they're considering the aforementioned change because they and their policy goals are at odds with the task of persuasion.  If they do it, then they have a better chance to take the White House without having to change themselves, which is difficult to do given the centripetal pressures of conformity to party platform.

So sure of their own righteousness are these Republican advocates that they deem democracy contemptible because it puts the errors of their opponents up for the vote.  That's fanaticism.  Their proposal is a push for a minority's single party rule dictated by alleged moral supremacy.  It's an end-run around democracy.

It's beyond outrageous.  Political equality is supposed to be America's greatest national virtue.  It's why the Founders fought the English crown.  Everyone's vote must be given equal weight.

Republicans keep saying that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to defend against tyranny.  If they were to succeed in devising a plan that systematically allows them to take the White House without having to win the popular vote, then their own logic about guns would make them targets for bullets.

Should this scheme be put into effect, then the United States Attorney General must investigate and challenge because we can't count on Congress to legislate a fair standard.  The neutrality of the Supreme Court is questionable, but violation of equal protection is a judiciable offense, and gerrymandering the Electoral College would tar the legitimacy of the national constitution if allowed to stand.

It can't be.  Not in our United States.