Tell your Senators: Deadline for Democracy: Prevent Election Manipulation
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Hi, my name is _____ and I live in ZIP code _____ and I’m a member of Indivisible SF.
Please recognize that the stakes are incredibly high and that your Republican colleagues do not have Americans' best interests at heart. Stop being polite and get the For the People Act passed. We need its Redistricting Reform right away.
The Republican Party has become increasingly anti-democratic. They’ve used all the tools at their disposal to weaken the role of voters in our system, including The Big Lie that incited the mob attack on our Capitol on January 6, 2021, which is now being used by Republican state legislatures as a pretext to restrict voting methods that increased Democratic turnout in 2020, rig election laws in their favor, and enable partisan officials to overturn the popular vote.
Redistricting is right around the corner. Republican partisan redistricting in 2010 helped establish the Republican state legislatures that are now passing those extreme voting restrictions. We need to put the For the People Act’s Redistricting Reform to work now.
Background
When it comes to the urgency of eliminating the filibuster or at least reforming it, we hear dreamy talk from some senators (*3) that relies more on conversations with Republican colleagues off the record than the glaring evidence that the Republican Party has become radically anti-democratic. They seem to have forgotten how McConnell accelerated things with his extreme obstruction of President Obama’s agenda, including holding a Supreme Court and hundreds of lower court seats open, so the next Republican could fill them with far-right judicial activists.
Our senators are also overlooking the whole raft of voter suppression laws enacted in Republican-led states after the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder in 2013 weakened the Voting Rights Act. (*9) Those laws had less effect in 2020 when, due to Covid-19, voters in all states were given easier access to the ballot box, like voting by mail, and a majority used it to vote for President Biden. Anticipating such results, Trump declared victory on election night, based on in-person voting.(*10) That became The Big Lie that endures to this day.
The For the People Act is truly nonpartisan: its benefits accrue to Americans of all parties, and it provides necessary protection from the aggressive actions of the anti-democratic Republican Party, like partisan redistricting.(*1) The Senate already favors Republicans, where they hold half the seats while representing just 43 percent of the U.S. electorate. And it’s not just the Senate — the Electoral College, the House of Representatives, and state legislatures all provide disproportionate representation to Republicans.(*2)
Redistricting is a process undertaken every 10 years, to map out legislative districts based on the results of the latest Census. It’s called gerrymandering when political districts are drawn to favor one political party. (Gerrymandering is a combination of the name Gerry and a salamander. When he was Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, approved a salamander-shaped redistricting plan for the state senate that gave the political advantage to his party.)
Republicans weaponized gerrymandering after losing to President Obama in 2008.(*5) They launched their $30 million REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Plan) centered around flipping and winning state legislative chambers in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida. By winning 117 state legislative races in 2010 across these states, they were able to lock in the power, not only to redraw all of their own maps, but to reshape Congress. So, in 2012, even though Democrats won 1.4 million more House votes than Republicans, they held onto the chamber, 234 to 201. Watch the 2020 documentary Slay The Dragon for more details.(*5a)
We might assume that both parties use the redistricting process to solidify their electoral power, but a University of Maryland study in 2020 showed that was not the case. According to voting rights lawyer Marc Elias, “Over the last twenty years, when Republicans have controlled the redistricting process, they have increased their seat share in Congress by an average of 9.1% in the next election. For Democrats, the study found no significant overall increase in congressional seat share when the party controlled redistricting.“ (*1)
We think that Ezra Klein has it right when he says, “The Republican Party has become a party that routinely wins power, particularly national power, even though they don’t win the most votes. And a party that wins power while losing voters is a party that is going to turn against voting, a party that is going to turn against elections.” (*4)
That’s why we need the Redistricting Reform in For The People Act (Title II, Subtitle E, *6) which would, among other things:
-- ban partisan gerrymandering by prohibiting adoption of any map that has the intent or effect of “unduly favoring or disfavoring” one political party over another;
-- establish uniform rules that every state would have to follow when drawing congressional districts, including enhanced protections to make sure the political effectiveness of communities of color is not diluted and a mandate to keep towns, neighborhoods, and other geographic areas where people have shared identities and common interests together in one district, where possible
References
How Republicans Use Redistricting To Their Advantage Democracy Docket
Advantage, GOP 538 Report, subtitle: Why Democrats have to win large majorities in order to govern while Republicans don’t need majorities at all
In 2010, Republicans 'Weaponized' Gerrymandering. Here's How They Did It. – BillMoyers.com
Watch At Home | Magnolia Pictures Link to watch Slay The Dragon
Trump And The GOP Have Now Lost More Than 50 Post-Election Lawsuits Forbes, 12/8/2020
Voting Laws Roundup: May 2021 Brennan Center
Shelby County v. Holder: the state of voting rights 6 years later Vox
Trump plans to declare premature victory if he appears "ahead" on election night Axios