When Washington added a 10th Congressional District in the wake of the 2010 Census, the process was marked by thoughtful bipartisan deliberation. A new district was carved out around Olympia, taking a portion of the 3rd District that is represented by Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, among others.
As a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reminds us, Washingtonians should be thankful for the manner in which the state defines congressional and legislative districts. The court ruled that two districts in North Carolina are unconstitutional because they intentionally gerrymandered an inordinate percentage of African-Americans into the districts in order to diminish minority voting power in other districts. The ruling held that this violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law.
In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that North Carolina’s 1st District “produced boundaries amplifying divisions between blacks and whites,” while in the state’s 12th District, “race, not politics, accounted for the district’s reconfiguration.” This marks the latest ruling regarding gerrymandering. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s Republican-led Legislature had improperly drawn districts; earlier this year, justices ordered a lower court to reexamine its ruling regarding legislative districts in Virginia.
In Monday’s opinion, Kagan also wrote: “The Constitution entrusts states with the job of designing congressional districts. But it also imposes an important constraint: A state may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason.”
States reconsider districts following each census, and the endeavor is a political football. With most states relying upon its Legislature to determine boundaries, the process becomes one in which the party in power jiggers districts to limit the election prospects of the other party. Not so in Washington, where a bipartisan commission is tasked with determining the outlay of districts. This results in logical districts that avoid the contorted salamander look of, say, Illinois’ 4th Congressional District or Pennsylvania’s 7th District.
There is nothing new about gerrymandering in American politics. Historians say that the Virginia House of Delegates in 1788 intentionally drew the boundaries of the state’s 5th Congressional District in an unsuccessful attempt to keep James Madison out of Congress. And while the Supreme Court is correct in overturning efforts to draw districts based upon race, it should go further. The court has never ruled against states drawing boundaries based upon partisan concerns, but a case coming out of Wisconsin might provide the justices with such an opportunity. A lower court has overturned that state’s gerrymandering, and the issue is expected to land before the Supreme Court.
Gerrymandering is an affront to democracy. By either herding opponents into a handful of districts to ensure the ruling party’s continued majority, or by cracking that minority party into numerous districts that diminish its voting power, gerrymandering is a case of placing partisanship ahead of fairness.
The Constitution’s only word on all of this is a requirement that congressional districts within a state be relatively equal in population. With modern technology, that could be easily achieved through the use of computer mapping to divide a state’s population into equal portions. Washington, with its history of fairness in drawing electoral districts, should lead the way in establishing such a process.
