Let's end the practice of legislators choosing their voters
Published March 12, 2014
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, March 11, 2014.
Rep. Mitchell Setzer, R-Catawba, has an extraordinary political record. The eight-term state House member has had only one opponent for election -- a Libertarian in 2002 -- since he won his party’s nomination in 1998.
Setzer is a gentleman from a well-respected family and a fine fellow. No one questions that. But in these fractious days, something else must explain his easy ride through the election system.
It’s called gerrymandering, and it explains how, in the words of WRAL-TV, “this year’s election began and all but ended” for 12 state Senate and 44 state House candidates on the day candidate filing closed. That’s nearly a quarter of the Senate and more than a third of the House membership elected because no one ran against them.
There are many reasons not to run for the legislature: Long hours, crummy pay, negative campaigning, public anger toward politicians. But running for office has never been easy. The reason so many races now go uncontested is gerrymandering.
The politicians are electing themselves. With the help of powerful computer programs, legislators drew district maps in the 1990s and 2000s that protected a Democratic majority and Republican minority. In those days, Democrats intentionally drew districts that were unwinnable for their own party as a way of packing as many Republican voters into uncontested districts as possible.
In 2011, Republicans simply reversed the process, drawing maps to ensure a GOP majority.
Another statistic demonstrates how the politicians have rigged the partisan game. After this May’s primary, and any possible runoffs, 21 Senate and 57 House candidates will have been elected. They are in districts that are so solidly drawn for either Republicans or Democrats that no one in the minority party is willing to run.
The only remedy for this undemocratic reality is an independent redistricting commission that is mandated to follow the district-drawing principles laid out in the state constitution and a state supreme court ruling from the early 2000s. Without such a commission, North Carolinians will have no real voice in who represents them in Raleigh.
March 12, 2014 at 8:13 am
Alan Ferguson says:
Gerrymandering is a way of having an election without an election. In a completely gerrymandered state, we will simply have the two party caucuses meet and pick their "candidate". That nominee will then stand unopposed for general election and be "elected" to the legislature. The respective party elites will then have realized their dream of completely capturing politics without the messiness of any responsibility to real voters.
Of course, in the process gerrymandering has made manipulation of the political system much easier for insiders and citizens and groups with lots of money. And never mind that those who have corrupted democracy in this way have in the process rendered the product of their caucuses (an unelected legislature) irrelevant to the rest of us.
March 12, 2014 at 8:56 am
Richard Bunce says:
Independent commission not the only way... that just protects the two major parties and continues to use all the soft census data that produces flawed districts. The real solution is a computer algorithm whose only input is the number of districts to draw, the land area to divide, the distribution of the population within that land area and maybe County boundaries. No population data such as age, sex, political affiliation, religion, ethnicity/"race", etc allowed. Goal is districts of equal population and similar size/compactness.
March 12, 2014 at 10:50 pm
Tom Hauck says:
Dear Editor,
Why do you blame gerrymandering?
For the November 2012 election, Democrats led in registration in 10 of the 13 Federal Congressional Districts. The Republicans appealed to more Unaffiliated voters and won 9 of the 13 Districts.
Nothing to do with voting lines.
March 13, 2014 at 11:20 am
Richard Bunce says:
I wonder how the Democratic candidates ever lose an election... the Democratic Party principles attract large groups of voters while Republican Party principles attract much smaller groups of voters.
