Editorial: Gerrymandering for me, but not for thee

The Editorial Board, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Dec 9, 2024

Published in Op Eds

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Democrats routinely complain that Republican gerrymandering is a threat to the republic. Not surprisingly, they’ve been noticeably silent about how it helped them this year.

In the recent election, Republicans won a narrow majority in the House. But even with Donald Trump’s victory in the popular vote, GOP House candidates struggled in states such as New York, California and even Nevada.

In New York, Trump won 44 percent of the vote. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, so did Republican House candidates. New York has 26 House seats. If Republicans won 44% of the races, one might expect they would have claimed at least 11 seats. Instead, they won only seven.

The story is similar in California. Trump and Republican House candidates won around 38% support. But Republicans have won only nine seats with one race still too close to call. Republicans will likely end up with less than 20% of California’s House seats.

Nevadans saw this play out firsthand. Trump topped 50% and beat Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 3 points. But Democrats won three of Nevada’s four House seats.

The Nevada Assembly tells a similar story. Democrats will head to Carson City with a 27-15 majority, but GOP candidates garnered 100,000 more raw votes.

Of course, demographics help explain why vote totals don’t always neatly translate into proportionate results. But there’s also another reason for these disparities. In blue states, Democrats and supposedly independent commissions draw districts in their favor. They gerrymander districts when it suits them.

Yet progressives have long warned of the dangers of Republicans operating in similar fashion. “Gerrymandering poses a critical threat to our democracy,” the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, recently insisted.

In fact, the term gerrymandering came from a Boston Gazette cartoonist who introduced the word in 1812. For more than 200 years, parties have been drawing districts in their favor. It isn’t a perfect system, but the country still thrives — Democratic hyperbole notwithstanding.

This hypocrisy is part of a predictable pattern. Progressives talk about the sanctity of “democracy” while seeking to tear down institutions and standards that might check their power. See: the filibuster, Electoral College and Supreme Court.

In a 2022 interview on CBS, Holder said, “I’m committed to fighting for fairness, because I’m also confident that if the process is fair, the Democrats, progressives will do just fine. We don’t have to cheat; Republicans have to cheat in order to win.” One suspects that Holder won’t spend the next two years complaining about how Democrats “cheated” through partisan gerrymandering.

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