Redistricting in Virginia
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the referendum on redistricting violated the Virginia Constitution. The “lobster district” is no more.
Republicans took the referendum to court earlier this year and the state (under the instruction of the newly elected Democratic governor) argued that there was no point to hearing the case because if the referendum failed, there would be nothing to consider. They argued that the Court is only supposed to rule on actions of the state, not on proposed actions that might not even happen.
That argument prevailed, but they lost the case after the referendum passed. And so the referendum was overturned and VA will not have any changes to the Congressional districts.
The left has not taken this well. One proposal is to lower the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices to 53. (The youngest of the justices who ruled that the referendum was unconstitutional is 53 years old.) Everyone would be forced into retirement and the governor could appoint new justices.
Redistricting and the Midterms
The reaction is all because of two features of the modern House of Representatives. First, the House race in November is so close. Second, so few seats are competitive.
The Republicans are currently in control of the House, but with only the slimmest of majorities. There are 435 seats in the House, so a majority should be 218. But the Republicans have only 217 seats. How are they the majority? There are currently 5 vacancies, so the effective majority is 216. That’s close! A couple missed flights or a bad casserole and the Republicans could lose a vote.
What about competitiveness? Well, most House seats aren’t at all competitive. Only 10-15 are currently listed as “tossups,” meaning that either party has a similar chance of winning. If you really stretch the definition you might get as many as 40 that are competitive. But there’s really only a small number of the 435 that could go to either party.
That’s why redistricting is so important. It is easier for Virginia Democrats, for instance, to gerrymander their way to a House majority than win elections. Or so they thought.
The irony is that the high profile efforts of Virginia’s redistricting referendum (Obama campaigned for it, which is a highly unusual thing for a former president to do) led to counter-efforts in Republican states, which actually worked. Virginia made it a lot easier, although far from guaranteed, for the Republicans to retain control of the House in November.
As we have mentioned before, the Supreme Court ruled that gerrymandering for racial outcomes is illegal. There are several districts that were established for this very purpose, and Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, and a few other Southern states have immediately redistricted with the purpose of undoing these districts.
Again, we are talking about a very small number of seats. A few changes here and there could change the election. Of course, there are some limits to gerrymandering. For instance, the smallest states have only one member of the House, so the state is the district and those boundaries can’t be changed. Others, such as Massachusetts present a different problem.
Although 40% of Massachusetts citizens voted for Donald Trump in the last election, there is not a single Republican member of the House from the Commonwealth. Has it been gerrymandered? Hard to say. Republicans are scattered throughout the population, with no single area coming up with enough people to form a congressional district. Getting a Republican district in Massachusetts would require efforts that old Elbridge Gerry couldn’t imagine.
Redistricting is demanded by the Constitution because the population is counted every ten years in the census, so it can’t be avoided. And there is no non-partisan way to carve out districts. You can’t drop a grid on a state and expect to get each square to contain an equal number of citizens. Someone has to move the lines.
Get used to it.