Missed Opportunities on "Elections"

Once upon a time, Americans mocked the elections taking place in the single-party Soviet Union by referring to them as “elections,” rather than elections. The quotation marks implied that the removal of choice from an election stained such an election as inadequate or even fraudulent.

These days, even as we export democracy to Iraq and celebrate the elections taking place there, our own elections may not be quite adequate themselves. Nathanial Persity, an election law expert at Penn Law School, pointed out earlier this year that the turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives is actually lower than the turnover in the Soviet Politburo.

Indeed, according to the government reform group Common Cause, in 2004, only 7 of the 399 incumbents running for the House were defeated. That’s a 98.2% victory rate for incumbents, and 4 of the 7 who were defeated came from Texas where a supremely sketchy mid-decade Tom DeLay-inspired redistricting led to the ouster of Democrats. And the incumbents did not win competitively – 85% of them won by more than 60 points.

Shocking, isn’t it? Elections in the House, the body imagined to be closest and most accountable to the people, may be nothing more than “elections.” By removing the barrier of contested elections, an oligarchy of permanent politicians has taken an enormous bite out of government accountability. The result is greater concern for the donors who fill incumbents’ coffers to ensure that the next “election” will turn out exactly like the last. Given this situation, it should be no surprise that it is special interests and not voter interests that move the ball in Washington.

How did we get to this point? In 1812, Massachusetts Governor William Gerry transformed the Essex County district to a shape vaguely reminiscent of a salamander, birthing the term “gerrymandering,” and providing what would become the tool-of-choice for politicians to entrench themselves and their parties in office.

Although generally thought of in a negative light, gerrymandering has its upside. It can be an extremely useful method to maintain minority representation in government. In the South and Southwest, gerrymandered districts have been used to assure Black and Hispanic Americans a seat at the political table and to prevent minority interests from being ignored by the tyranny of the majority. However, more often, gerrymandering is used not to benefit the voters, but the politicians themselves. State legislatures are generally given the responsibility of drawing the very district lines they depend on for their positions. Leaving the inherently political task of redistricting to those with the most at stake in hope that they will not exploit that power defies centuries of human experience.

Voters this week in Ohio and California had the opportunity to consider reforms to redistricting, but the measures in neither state passed. The two plans were met with considerable disdain from both parties. Redistricting for selfish political gain, after all, is a nonpartisan issue – both parties gain from eliminating competitive elections.

In California, the measure was proposed by a Republican governor in an effort to break a Democratic lock on the state legislature. Governor Schwarzeneggar proposed that the task of redistricting be handed over to a panel of retired judges, but ran up against heavy Democratic opposition. The sides were reversed, but the result the same, in Ohio, where labor unions and moveon.org pushed for a measure creating an independent panel to redraw districts and break Republican control of the state assembly.

Both measures would have maintained the necessary human involvement in redistricting in order to keep the good of gerrymandering (minority representation), while eliminating the bad (partisan strangleholds). The defeats were a setback for the election reform movement, though the fight moves on to states like Florida and Massachusetts.

The self-dealing of redistricting is truly repugnant to most Americans. With voter accountability slowly being removed from the political process, referendums like those in Ohio and California provide the rare opportunity to halt partisan redistricting. Unfortunately, voters failed to capitalize on the opportunity this week and ensured that at least in two states, elections will be more like “elections.”