March 10, 2020

By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

If I asked you which political issues fire you up the most, “legislative redistricting” probably wouldn’t make the top 10. But ensuring the democratic process is fair and not rigged is ultimately more important than whatever political dispute we’re having at the moment.

A group called Arkansas Voters First last Thursday filed a proposed constitutional amendment that would change how Arkansas redraws congressional and state legislative lines after each census, which is occurring this year. The League of Women Voters is the effort’s public face. If the group collects enough signatures and withstands the inevitable court challenge, the amendment will be on the ballot in November.

The goal is to reduce gerrymandering, where the political party in power stuffs the other party’s voters into a small number of districts and then spreads its own voters around, thus maintaining a disproportionate legislative majority.

One of the initiative’s organizers, David Couch, told me its rationale is, “Voters should pick their politicians, and politicians should not pick their voters.”

Couch told me the effort has sufficient financial backing and polled in the high 60s. He also sponsored the recent initiatives passed by voters to raise the minimum wage and legalize medical marijuana.

Currently, the Arkansas Legislature draws the lines for the U.S. House of Representatives, while the Board of Apportionment composed of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general draws the Legislature’s lines.

If Arkansas Voters First has its way, Arkansans would apply to be members of a nine-member commission effectively composed of three Republicans, three Democrats, and three independents or members of another party. The Arkansas Supreme Court chief justice would appoint a three-judge panel to cull the list to 30 from each group. The governor and legislative leaders each could remove two from each group. The final nine members, three from each of the three groups, would be selected randomly. Congressional and state legislative maps would have to be approved by at least six members, including at least two from each group.

Gerrymandering is almost as old as the Constitution, but it’s become a bigger concern in recent years as the electorate has become more divided and as Big Data has allowed Republicans and Democrats to precisely define us and separate us.

As reported by David Daley’s 2016 book, whose title includes an unprintable word, Republicans prioritized state legislative races in 2010 and gained almost 700 seats nationwide knowing those offices would redraw the lines after that year’s census. Democrats were caught flat-footed.

Thanks in large part to technology-driven gerrymandering, Republicans controlled 33 more seats in the U.S. House after the 2012 elections despite Democrats winning 1.4 million more votes overall. In Ohio that year, Republicans won 51% of the vote statewide but controlled 12 of the state’s 16 U.S. House seats. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won 83,000 more votes statewide, but Republicans controlled 13 of 18 House seats.

I’m an independent. If you’re a Republican, you’re response to all this might be, “Good! It helped our side.” But remember that what comes around goes around.

Arkansas’ current lines were drawn when Democrats were still in charge after the 2010 census. They tried to gerrymander, but Republicans won anyway at the ballot box, which is where elections should be won.

Now Republicans control the three Board of Apportionment offices and three-fourths of the Legislature. The 2nd Congressional District in central Arkansas is somewhat competitive. By gerrymandering the maps, Republicans in 2022 can probably add a few seats to their already huge legislative majority and take the 2nd District completely out of play.

Arkansas Voters First’s effort will be opposed by some Republican officials who will argue the current system works fine and that the effort’s timing is suspect, given that this will be the first redistricting where they can draw the lines after a century-and-a-half of Democratic Party rule. It’s our turn, some will say.

If voters have a chance to decide, the argument should be not about whether gerrymandering is a good thing, because it’s not, or whether politicians will gerrymander, because they will, but whether Arkansas Voters First’s initiative is actually the right way to prevent it.

That is, unless we want a rigged system, which, unfortunately, some people do.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.