Republicans were delusional when their cult led them to believe gerrymandering would secure GOP election wins

A roar of disapproval of Donald Trump and his incompetent regime
Echo opinion letter published in the Boston Globe by Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

Republicans tried to gerrymander its way to victory. It backfired spectacularly. The midterms results were brought to you by dummymandering.

Republicans did everything they could to hold on to political power, even through unfair and undemocratic means. Tuesday’s elections were conducted using gerrymandered voting maps that were enacted, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, to unfairly diminish the power of some citizens’ votes, particularly those of the very Americans our civil rights laws were meant to protect. Across the country, Republicans tried to rig the system to unfairly hold on to power.

But voters went to the polls and took their power back.

In a stunning rebuke of President Trump and Republicans from coast to coast, Democrats outperformed even the most generous polling predictions, handily winning control of both houses of Congress, a flurry of governorships, and turning state houses blue in states — including Texas, which arguably has the most gerrymandered map in the nation — that Trump carried easily in the presidential election just two short years ago.

From Texas to Tennessee to North Carolina, Republican-led mid-decade mapmaking aimed to dilute Democratic voting power, usually by targeting Black and brown communities. They accomplished this by either breaking up or “cracking” Black or brown urban areas like Memphis or “packing” them together, like the single Black majority district in Louisiana.

But here’s where things went wrong for the GOP: In trying to maximize the number of GOP-leaning districts in these states, they inadvertently diluted the voting power of Republicans. This happened not only because the new maps spread Republican voters too thinly within districts but also because Republicans didn’t account for independents and Latino voters who previously supported Trump rejecting GOP candidates.
The narrow GOP margins didn’t hold. The result❓ An absolute trouncing.

Even in Florida, where Republicans managed to hold off a blue wave, Republicans underperformed and vulnerable Democrats in targeted districts, like Representative Kathy Castor, held on.

This wasn’t what Republicans planned. After a 2019, Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the ability of federal courts to even hear challenges to partisan gerrymanders, state legislatures went to work. Despite the fact that congressional mapmaking is only mandated every 10 years, GOP-controlled states began a busy cycle of mid-decade redistricting efforts to put partisan gerrymanders in place faster.

But here’s the problem: In many states, the Venn diagram of a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander, which is still prohibited by the Voting Rights Act, is often a circle. This is especially true in Southern states where the majority of Black Americans, who make up one of the strongest Democratic voting blocs, live. That gave Republicans the ability to fend off legal challenges alleging illegal racial gerrymandering with a ready defense: The maps in question were drawn based on politics, not race.

That turbocharged GOP gerrymandering efforts pushed by Trump. In one of the most egregious examples, Texas redrew maps to try to increase the number of Republicans that could be elected to Congress from the state by five. That spurred Democratic-controlled states like California and New York to try to blunt the effect with their own partisan gerrymandering.

Then, earlier this year, the Supreme Court again gave such efforts an additional boost, striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act and rendering the ability to redress illegal racial gerrymanders in court almost impossible.

But here is what Republicans didn’t count on: Americans were paying close attention. In a year where corruption ranked among the biggest issues motivating voters, Americans went to the polls and rejected Republicans’ antidemocratic actions. Democrats outperformed. The thin margins in gerrymandered districts didn’t hold, and the blue tsunami flooded them.

No one should learn the wrong lesson from this outcome and think that gerrymandering doesn’t matter. It’s antidemocratic to try to dilute any community’s voting power in order to game the outcome of elections. Even when done defensively to try to blunt the effect of other states’ orchestrated discriminatory mapmaking movement, as California did, in the end you cannot gerrymander your way to fair elections.

Instead, congressional Democrats and lawmakers in newly blue state houses must use the mandate voters gave them in this election to pass laws that ensure voting districts become and remain representative of the people, so that their lawmakers can be accountable to the people. That is a day one priority that must be done simultaneously with the other urgent work ahead that includes addressing affordability, housing, immigration reform, corruption, and so much more. 

Yes, the people have spoken. Now comes time for action.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Boston Globe.