Today, the US Supreme Court will begin the process of deciding if voters can self-segregate. Oral arguments are scheduled in the lawsuit challenging the state’s redistricting in 2011. A dozen Democrats living in heavily-Republican areas claim they have been “disenfranchised” because they have to vote in a district almost guaranteed to go Republican. They want the court to redraw the lines so that their districts have more Democrats in them.
Who they should be suing are all of the Democrats that have abandoned the suburban and rural areas of the state to densely concentrate themselves in urban areas. Liberals’ desire to live near their government jobs, with public transit, neighborhood public schools and government funded recreation facilities have surrendered vast swaths of the state to Republican voters.
That ultra-concentration of support is borne out in the map from the 2010 gubernatorial election–the last one before the 2011 redistricting:
The map shows the dense concentration of Democratic voters in a handful of counties–often surrounded by just as densely concentrated Republican voters–and a few sections of the state that “lean” Republican.
So when you look at that map, how do you draw legislative and Congressional districts that produce “competitive” races? Remember when President Obama paid a campaign visit to Milwaukee and he stopped in a Milwaukee district where he garnered 100% of the vote in 2008. If a Republican couple was to move into that district could they make a claim that they are “disenfranchised”?
Democrats like to use the “we won the popular vote” argument–pointing out that more votes were cast for Democratic legislative candidates statewide than Republicans–but they ended up with just one-third of the seats in the Assembly. But just like the party learned in the Electoral College, running up huge margins in a select few parts of the country or state doesn’t mean you get to run the whole show. Nor does it explain how the GOP won the statewide US Senate or Presidential races.
But if you think that you can take the map split between dark blues and dark reds and somehow make districts that don’t look like Jackson Pollock paintings, go right ahead. Just hope that Democrats don’t decide that city living isn’t for them anymore.
