Viewed just from the perspective of electoral politics, you can’t really blame a political party in power for using its position to make the next election more favorable for itself.
Winning sort of is the point in politics.
And anything that’s not illegal is literally fair game.
Though from a moral perspective, anything that gives any individual more say than another in what the State gets up to is clearly unfair and an illegitimate application of State power.
So, while I personally did vote for California’s recent gerrymander and am in favor of Virginia’s vote yesterday to join us in that, neither is really a cause for celebration.
Because it should not have been necessary or possible.
Gerrymandering shapes electoral districts in order to achieve a particular electoral goal, after all. It uses the power of the State to privilege the votes of one group over another.
And every redistricting is also that.
Redistricting under the Voting Rights Act that aimed to increase one group’s representation in the federal legislature at the expense of another also uses the power of the State to influence the results of elections. The VRA mandated racially-biased gerrymandering.
The only real difference being whose goals are being served by the choices of where to draw the boundaries.
Because you have to change the system to actually stop gerrymandering.
Any system that uses districts will necessarily result in unfair outcomes eventually, either because population levels will change in the districts or because the boundaries will have to be redrawn to compensate for that.
You have to get rid of districts entirely to get rid of gerrymandering.
Which means a system of state-wide proportional representation is necessary for a fair electoral system.
I’ve made this point here before.
Many times, actually.
But it’s worth repeating, because while it is important to keep an eye on the current gerrymandering wars it’s also important to remember that they’re a built-in side-effect of our current electoral system and that there’s no reason to think that whoever wins this round will actually do anything about the underlying problem.
Because actually fixing it would mean that neither of the current major parties would ever dominate the government this way again.
And they’d both rather risk the other party winning complete control than guarantee that neither of them could.
