On Tuesday, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that will let the Democratic-controlled state legislature create new congressional districts for this fall’s midterms. Virginia Democrats made a complicated argument to voters: that an extreme but temporary gerrymander is necessary to bring a measure of electoral fairness to the whole country. In the end, the measure passed, though just barely. Democrats can celebrate; they took a risk, and they won. But this was the easy part.
The argument made by the “yes” side was unusually complex for American politics, where many politicians and their consultants assume that voters don’t know very much and think that every political choice has to be dumbed down to its most basic form. In this case, Democrats had to make an argument in multiple stages, referring to events many voters may not have paid much attention to and asking the electorate to trust them in the future.
Democrats demonstrated that when Republicans play procedural hardball, they’re willing to do the same.
Virginia Democrats insisted they still believe that gerrymandering is a bad thing but that doing it now is necessary because of a map-drawing crisis that President Donald Trump created. The way to fight back was to use Virginia’s power to redraw its own maps in a way that will likely take the state’s congressional delegation from its current 6-5 Democratic margin to a 10-1 blue advantage after November’s elections. This gerrymander will be temporary; in a few years, the state will go back to using an independent redistricting commission.
In other words, the Democrats argued, sometimes you have to do something unfair in order to make greater fairness possible. Republicans have gerrymandered ruthlessly in recent years, and only by using the same weapon against them can Democrats force a renegotiation of the entire system. Or, as one supporter of the referendum told MS NOW, “Unfortunately, we’ve been pushed into the position where two wrongs will make a right.”
Whether it will actually turn out that way, however, is far from certain.
This is the latest skirmish in a line-drawing battle that began in July, when Trump ordered Texas Republicans to redraw their maps immediately rather than wait till after the next census, as states traditionally do. The president made no effort to conceal his aim: for Texas to draw five new Republican seats and increase the GOP’s chances of holding the party’s narrow House majority in the fall.
Texas Republicans duly followed Trump’s orders. That touched off a frenzy of map-drawing, with multiple states controlled by both parties considering new maps. Missouri and North Carolina gave Republicans another likely seat each, and the biggest Democratic prize came when California voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum to set aside their independent redistricting commission for the next three elections and work from a more pro-Democratic map. With the Virginia result, it looks like the result of all this redrawing will be something close to a wash. (Florida may still do its own redistricting, which would swing the pendulum back slightly in Republicans’ direction.)
That would be a victory for Democrats, and not only because the alternative — allowing Republicans to put a thumb on the electoral scale — would put them at a disadvantage in upcoming elections. They demonstrated that when Republicans play procedural hardball, they’re willing to do the same, even if it means, at least in the short term, ignoring the broader principle of fair representation. In a democracy, after all, the voters are supposed to pick their representatives, not the other way around. Competitive elections are good, because they force accountability on politicians. Elections that are all but decided in advance aren’t very democratic.
If Republicans simply refuse to change their ways, what then?
Although almost no one in either party says publicly that gerrymandering is a good thing, Democrats have been particularly vocal in their opposition to it. While Republicans might have mouthed those words from time to time, when push came to shove they used their power to solidify their power. Democrats, on the other hand, have gerrymandered in some states (such as Massachusetts and Maryland) but instituted independent redistricting commissions elsewhere; those commissions are currently used in 11 mostly Democratic states.
So what happens now? The theory of the successful initiatives in California and Virginia is that only by punishing Republicans for their mid-decade redistricting can the GOP be persuaded to pull back from the unfair system it has constructed.
In other words, this is a step toward some kind of grand bargain in which the parties will agree on a future with more competitive elections. Unfortunately, that will still be a tough sell for the GOP, which might reasonably conclude that if the point where we have arrived for this year’s midterm election is its worst-case scenario, gerrymandering will continue to work to its advantage.
That raises the practical problem at the end of this tit-for-tat. If Democrats’ goal is to force Republicans to come to the table to negotiate a post-gerrymandering future, Republicans will have to conclude that the current system is costing them a chance at power.
And if Republicans simply refuse to change their ways, what then? Will Democrats in California and Virginia keep their word to revert back to independent redistricting commissions, which would be unilateral disarmament if the redistricting wars are still going on?
It isn’t a question Democrats had to answer this year; anger at Trump was enough to get their voters to the polls to strike back against his schemes. But a few years from now, they may face a difficult choice: voluntarily put themselves at a disadvantage in every congressional election, or tell voters they have to keep gerrymandering to counter Republicans, hoping that one day we’ll get a fairer system. It may not be such an easy case to make.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.