I've written elsewhere (in connection with the Texas Dems claims about Republican redistricting attempts) that "disenfranchise" has become one of the least meaningful terms in American politics (right up there with neoconservative).
And while mainly our friends on the Left use the term in connection with policies with which they disagree, even conservative John Fund broke out the term yesterday, in a discussion of redistricting engineered to protect incumbents:
Incumbent-protection schemes are one of the most significant remaining barriers to voters' ability to express their preferences adequately in elections. The outcome for almost all U.S. House races last year was preordained by devices such as gerrymandering, made easier than ever by computer mapping software that allows both parties to manipulate district lines until they have the perfect political DNA to ensure the re-election of incumbents. Senate races remain more competitive because no one has yet figured out a way to gerrymander a state’s boundaries. But the House -- the body intended by the founders to be closest to the people -- has become an elite preserve for incumbents who have walled themselves off from competition.Liberals do this all the time, but Fund sets it out explicitly: the lack of adequate (by whose standard?) choice for voters is disenfranchisement!Disenfranchising voters became a bipartisan exercise last year, when the new census mandated redistricting. If Democrats moan that they have little chance of taking back the House in the next election, they can in large part blame themselves for allowing their incumbents to greedily build political castles at the expense of more competitive districts that would have left House control more in doubt.
Sorry, but it's not.
Disenfrachisement, properly understood, means to take away a person's rights (in this case, to vote). In this country, felony disenfranchisement is the typical mechanism. People do not lose the right to vote simply because they live in an area that tends to vote differently than they do, and hence their preferred candidates rarely, if ever, win (or in some cases, don't even run). People do not lose the right to vote simply because constitutionally mandated redistricting takes account of changing demographics and could render their area subject to the political cirumstance previously described. Your right to vote has not been taken away! You are not disenfranchised!
Redistricting does stir passions in people, and it's become a much more precise science than it once was. But that doesn't change the fact that it's always been a relatively partisan exercise. The design virtually ensures it in our two-party republic. And once upon a time, theories of "Responsible Party Government" would have thought this was a good thing! Now, even conservatives like John Fund are lamenting the partisan nature of redistricting, never mind that it's part of the constitutional design across the nation.
Some states have adopted technoratic "nonpartisan" approaches to redistricting, which tend to give independents disproportionate sway in the process and may or may not produce better policy. Too often, the intellectual progeny of the Progressives who are most in favor of these (unaccountable) technocratic solutions to the "problem" of redistricting seem to think that, somehow, more competitive elections will produce better policy. That's the real heart of their argument. But why should that be the case? Why will better policy necessarily result if we elect more people from the murky middle, and the legislative/policy marketplace has fewer options at the extremes to pick and choose from?
No answer. Proponents of "fairer" redistricting never pursue that line of thought.
Nor do they address the problem of incumbency directly. The advantage of incumbency is nothing new, after all: incumbents tend to win elections. But most of the same people who favor "fairer" redistricting tend to oppose term limits legislation, arguing that voters should have the right to retain "good" legislators. Fine. So why, if a legislator clearly acts in a manner opposed by his constituents, can't he be turned out, even in a protected, gerrymandered district? Ask Dan Rostenkowski and Tom Foley about that. Why is some unaccountable, technocratic redistricting board somehow going to provide an easy fix for the problem of incumbency? A fix that's any better than, say, term limits?
No answer. Not from John Fund (who, I imagine, favors this approach as a substitute for term limits), and not from the Left (which generally has not been a supporter of term limits).
Whatever the case, one thing is clear: you are not disenfranchised simply because you are a Democrat who lives in an area that votes Republican (or vice versa). You are outnumbered. That's how simple majority-rule works. There's always John C. Calhoun's notion of the concurrent majority, I suppose, but somehow I don't think anyone is really advocating THAT? Well, aside from Lani Guinier, who sort of advocated such a thing (but, I digress).
The typical way voters are disenfranchised in this country is Democrat vote fraud. And legislating from the bench.
[08/16/03 10:15 PM] [Posted by Noel]
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