Bring back local political competition

Mathematics has an uncomfortable way of bringing clarity to issues we might not otherwise wish to address. This truism is illustrated in The Truth About Race, Gerrymandering and the Democrats by Jonathan S. Tobin.

But as the Washington Post reported on Friday, the party hopes that a strategy based on lawsuits will eventually change the balance of power in the House, if not soon, but after the next redrawing of district lines around the country following the 2020 census. But while the Post article details how legal challenges might undermine successful Republican efforts to gerrymander districts in their favor, it leaves out one essential element to the equation. The Democrats problem isn’t so much nefarious GOP maneuvers to create favorable boundaries for their candidates, as it is the Voting Rights Act that has created so many majority-minority districts. If all the lawsuits are successful, it will be African-American and Hispanic Democratic officeholders that are the big losers, not the Republicans.

As even the Post article noted, the current Democratic court challenges to various districts around the country don’t amount to enough seats to tip the House in their direction even if they were all successful. But the goal is to set in place legal standards that would forbid states from lumping a large percentage of their African-American voters in to a few districts, leaving the rest dominated by white voters.

There’s no question that this practice has been a godsend for Republicans and a disaster for the Democrats. African-Americans are a huge part of the Democrats’ base throughout the country. In the south, they have become virtually their sole bulwark of support. Thus, grouping them together in a few districts has the effect of making the Democrats non-competitive everywhere else.

But what was left out of the Post article is the fact that this idea wasn’t invented in a backroom by some evil GOP genius bent on marginalizing blacks and empowering conservatives. Instead, it was more or less invented by liberal judges who interpreted the Voting Rights Act as mandating not just the right of everyone to vote but the creation of an electoral environment in which minorities could be set up to succeed.

I do not like race-based solutions and while I understand the historical context that led to majority-minority districting and the good intentions behind it, I have always thought such districting inconsistent with the Constitution and ultimately self-defeating.

My perspective is that what is most critical is not representation by skin color or religion or whatever other semi-arbitrary fancy of the political day might be but rather, competition. You want districts that foster competition. To that end, I have always thought that a random reshuffling of district boundaries every ten years (subject to a couple of parameters such as geographical compactness and obviously number of voters) would be very beneficial. Not knowing if they would be in the same predictable boundaries with the same voters would, likely, lead politicians to a more balanced and considered calculation of any action as it might impact all voters, not just the current ones that they can rely on.

The gerrymandering that occurs now has led to the consequence that very few seats are successfully contested. Unless they are caught in enormously embarrassing or illegal circumstances, a politician is secure until he chooses to retire. Secure politicians lead to rent seeking and regulatory capture to the detriment of all citizens.

There are other consequences. The effort to establish majority-minority districts has indeed successfully changed the face of the House of Representatives and if you are concerned solely with appearances, then that can be chalked up as a success. But if you are concerned that all citizens are equally represented, then there is cause for concern. Because African-Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrats, majority-minority districts weaken the balance of Democrat office seekers and substantially sidelines the representation of African-American concerns in the political process. Why? Democrats assume that they are the only party for African-Americans and therefore take those votes for granted. While they remain cognizant of African-American concerns, those concerns are not duly weighted in political calculations. If you believe African-Americans won't vote for anyone else no matter what you do, you simply don't have to focus very much on those concerns.

For Republicans the calculation is different. If they are never going to receive more than 10% of the African-American vote, then there is no return on invested time and money in courting those voters. Instead, all the focus is shifted to other voters.

Between Democrats assuming they have a lock on African-American votes no matter what and Republicans assuming they will never get any return on courting African-American voters, African-American concerns receive short shrift. Congress looks more diverse but that appearance of diversity is not reflected in the implementation of policies that actually might benefit African-Americans.

Random boundaries might lead to a decimation of the number of African-Americans in Congress but it might also lead to a dramatic increase in the actual representation of African-American interests. The candidate running for a district that is 45:55 (of either party) is going to be much more solicitous to the minority interests than the candidate running for a district that is 90:10.

This is simply a mathematical issue. It imputes no negative motives to any individual. And these mathematical issues of democracy (proportionate representation, first-past-the-post, etc.) have long been known, explored and documented. There are numerous good books out there discussing the various trade-offs between different types of districting and voting. There is nothing new under the sun.

I think Tobin is right. Majority-minority districts have substantially decreased the competitiveness of both Democrats and Republicans by making those seats safe. What I would like to see, by whatever policy change, is an increase in partisan competition at all levels and for all roles. Partisanship in itself is a rather nasty beast but it is worse when politicians settle down comfortably in the modern equivalent of "rotten boroughs", safe from transparency and accountability, and free to pursue their rent seeking and regulatory capture ways regardless of the impact on the citizenry.

There is nothing wrong with Ferguson or Detroit or Chicago or San Francisco or Baltimore that a little political competition won't cure. It has nothing to do with race and little to do with the particularities of a particular party and everything to do with absence of political competition.