How Congress Was Stolen – How Gerrymandering Makes Washington Go Round

Posted on by Jeremy Larsen

Have any of you ever heard of the term Gerrymandering?  It is a weird word, with a fairly unknown meaning.  Gerrymandering is the process by which a group in control of the legislature of a state or country, will draw voting district lines in a way that allows them to have more representatives than their percentage of the population would allow normally.  It also allows wealthy donors to find the candidates who will most likely provide the swing vote in a decision that benefits the donor, and donate less money to greater effect.  While I am going to write mostly about what has been done by Republicans over the last few decades, this is not limited to Republicans alone, they just have done it more in the last few decades.

I am going to talk about a simple example of gerrymandering, then you can extrapolate it out to see how it would work in reality.

gerrymandering-ii Now who do you think has the power to decide how the district lines are drawn?  It is usually the party in power in the state where they are redrawing the lines.  That means that after the Republican party spent the 1980s on “Operation Red State”, which was a plan to take control of as many state and local legislatures as possible so that they could redraw the lines to give them as much of an advantage as possible.  They did this because they saw the country moving more and more ideologically away from their positions.  Instead of changing their values to more accurately reflect their constituents, they used what power they could to take away the power of people who disagreed with them.

Before I go on, I want to say that this is all legal.  It is something that they were allowed to do under the law.  However, what has resulted is districts that look like this:

gerrymandered-districts

I don’t know about you, but those districts are only that shape for one reason, to take power away from one group and give it to another.  This process is one by which the Republican party has managed to control the House of Representatives for so many years, even as the country is shifting away from them.  I know you can point to a year here or there where the Democrats were in control, but in this case the exceptions prove the rule when you look at all the other factors responsible.

How does this effect people like you and me.  The answer to that is both simple and complicated.  The simple answer is this, if you live in a district that has been shaped for political advantage, then your vote counts less (or more) than it normally should.  The more complicated answer has to do with wealthy campaign contributions and what effect it has on business and tax laws.  If these lines have been drawn so that the majority of districts, even with a minority of overall individuals, all have representatives who are favorable to big business, then these businesses need to contribute less money to win control of areas that will provide them with tax breaks.  Is it any surprise that money in politics is the root of many of these problems? Who do you think donates to campaigns in close races?  Who do you think benefits the most from gerrymandering?  Hint: it isn’t you and me, this doesn’t benefit us at all.

One solution, though it may not be possible in the U.S., is to adopt a system where we take the popular vote in a state, and allow that state to send representatives based on the popular vote, instead of by district.  For example, in Texas the state (heavily gerrymandered) voted 52% Rep, 43% Dem, and 5% Ind.  However their representatives are 24 Rep, 12 Dem, and 0 Ind.  If this was split up based on popular vote, then the Rep would have 19 representatives, Dems would have 16 representatives and Independents would have 1 representative.  That seems an inherently more balanced way to adjudicate the system.

Another possible solution would be to enact laws that say a district must maintain a certain density, so that it is not sprawling out all over the place.  If we were to redraw districts so that they made geographic and population sense, instead of political sense, much of this would disappear.  There are no states that look like some of these gerrymandered districts, and amazingly enough the U.S. Senate which is two senators per state, is fairly close to the national distribution of left and right leaning individuals.  With no gerrymandering, it is possible to have fair and balanced elections.

If you are like me, you don’t just want to understand a problem, you want to know what you can do about it.  There are a few things you can do:

  1. You can write your congressperson asking for them to work hard on campaign finance reform
  2. You can also contact your congress people and ask for non-partisan redistricting in your state
  3. You can push for laws governing the drawing of districts that prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again
  4. You can educate yourself more and pass information like this along
  5. You can research which candidates actually support (and have voted to support) ending gerrymandering

 

Thanks for reading, and I know this one was dry, but it is an important lesson.
– Jeremy Larsen

Speaker, Author, Progressive

The Protests are Over…Now What?

Posted on by Jeremy Larsen

The Protests are Over…Now What?

The protests after the inaguration of Donald Trump are over.  Millions of people across the U.S. and the world made there voices heard.  It is a week later and more than a dozen executive orders later, and he is still the president.  That energy, anger, and exuberance has cooled. This is where it becomes time to see if your passion and fire were real, or just a reaction that will fade as you go back to your life in the coming days weeks and months.  This is the hard part.  For many people, the biggest hurdle is they don’t know where to start, for others it seems like there is too much to do, and for others, dedicating themselves to actually doing the hard work after the energy is gone is too much to ask.

Let’s face facts, anyone can get swept up in the excitement of the moment, go to a rally, and make their voices heard, that is the easy part.  Some people got arrested, most protested peacefully and nothing really changed in their life.  The protests, while an important part of making voices heard and showing that people believe in something, don’t equate to making the change.  The protests were a starting point, but what comes next is more important.

How many of you out there are feeling lost, afraid, and have no idea what to do?  That is ok, because there are dozens of things you can do.  The first few are really easy, require only a few minutes of time a day, and can have a huge impact when done in numbers.

Calling, Writing, Contacting Elected Officials

Every single one of us has elected officials that directly represent us, we also have elected officials that indirectly represent us, and we have elected officials that don’t represent us but still make decisions that affect us.  That is the nature of our democracy.

Wherever you live you have local officials, city, county, state, etc.  These are the people directly responsible for the actions that affect your day to day lives.  They directly represent your interests, and usually are the most responsive to contact, both in their policies and in their actual responses.  This is because they need many fewer votes to either win or lose an election.  If enough of their constituents contact them, they will respond, because they don’t want to lose the next election.

We also have national officials we elect, our representatives in the house are elected district by district, and our senators are elected by state.  These individuals indirectly affect our every day lives by making national level decisions that effect the states.  You can not only speak to these officials representing your district or state, you can also contact officials from other states to let them know that what your beliefs are.

While an individual phone call may not make much of a difference, when an official receives hundreds, maybe even thousands of phone calls, emails, and letters a day, their opinions begin to change.  Here are some contacts for the big players if you live in California.

Join a PAC or a Nonprofit:

Often times people want a more intimate way to make a difference, or have a specific cause that they want to take up.  There are thousands of political action committees and non profits out there that need help.  If you really have a passion for something, contact one of these organizations and see if you can volunteer to help.  They often know more about the particular issue that you are passionate about than anyone else.  For example, how many people who protested spent hours on the phone during the primaries making phone calls for Bernie or Hillary?  How many did that during the general election?  Those are the kinds of things that can help change policy on a direct front.  Often times the work is not glamorous, collecting signatures and phone banking is tough, but again, in volume it can help enormously. Some lists of examples of well known PACS and non profits can be found at:

Do your research, find ones that you agree with, and support them.  Whether it is a donation to these organizations, volunteer work, or even becoming a paid employee, there are hundreds of ways to support and help these organizations do work you believe in.

Finding Your Own Voice in the World

This might be the most important one of the bunch.  Every single one of us has our own story, our own talents, and our ways of being effective to make change in the world.  Whether it is creating a blog, talking to crowds, or consistently discussing and educating about our chosen passions, finding your voice and using it successfully is a way to maximize the impact that you have.  Sometimes doing this can help you refine your ideas even more, and provide opportunities for larger and larger ways of making yourself an agent of change.

There is no limit to what an individual person can accomplish, if they are willing to do the little things day in and day out to make the world a better place. If every person who wants to make change does something about it, then these special snowflakes that people keep talking about will turn into an avalanche of change.  Don’t be scared to look around you, don’t be scared to do something about it, any one person can be the one who makes a difference, whether at the small scale of your community, or at the bigger scale of the country as a whole.  Let’s all get off of our metaphorical couches, use the momentum we created at the protests, and turn into an unstoppable force for equality, justice, freedom, and love.  Let’s turn that anger into focus and make the next four years our years to be ready for Nov 3, 2020.  Here is a countdown of how long until that day:
https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?msg=2020%20US%20Presidential%20Election&p0=263&year=2020&month=11&day=3&hour=0&min=0&sec=0&fromtheme=election

Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment, like, share, or even contact me personally with any questions you may have.

Jeremy Larsen
Author, Speaker, Progressive