Why Gerrymandering Is Inherently Racist

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, on the issue of civil rights, manipulating district voting boundaries or gerrymandering is dividing the nation. Republicans suggest that the process is not that bad. But in a recent “Washington Post” op-ed, Michael Li, who’s one of the foremost experts on this issue says, that’s a misleading narrative. Here he is with Michel Martin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Mr. Li, thank you so much for talking with us.

MICHAEL LI, SENIOR COUNSEL, BRENNAN CENTER DEMOCRACY PROGRAM: Yes. I’m glad to be here.

MARTIN: The Democrats have been saying with increasingly strident terms that something is desperately wrong. I mean, they’ve gone so far as to say that, you know, democracy is at stake, and Republicans have said the opposite. They say that Democrats are exaggerating, that they’re hysterical, that there’s nothing to see here, they’re just tightening up some things administratively and that this is sort of par for the course. So, the first question I have for you, is something wrong with the way the maps are being drawn, the way, sort of, elections are being administered, the way the legislation is moving to change the way elections are ministered?

LI: Well, you know, there’s certainly is something wrong. And, you know, gerrymandering is, you know, the bridging of maps. You know, the United States, we redraw maps every 10 years after the census and the purpose of that is to make sure the districts are equally populated. That’s a requirement of the constitution and it’s also an opportunity for states to make sure that maps comply with laws like the voting rights act. But for a bunch of our history, it’s also been an opportunity for mischief, for people to put their thumb on the scale and to try to tilt a map in favor of themselves, in favor of their party or to discriminate against disfavored groups, in particular, racial minorities. And that’s what they call gerrymandering, and that’s something that we’ve done, you know, throughout our history from the very, very beginning of the country, but it is something that’s getting worse because it is easier now to draw maps that have a really pernicious effect and make sure that they stick. You can literally draw tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of maps in a matter of hours. Take North Carolina, for example, which a 50/50 state. A perpetual battleground. Last decade, Republicans drew a map that had 10 Republican districts and only three Democratic ones, right, which is widely skewed. Democrats, you know, could win 50 percent of the vote and only end up with a quarter of the district. And, you know, Texas is, I think, perhaps the most egregious example of this where, you know, under the old maps, Democrats got 36 percent of the seats in Texas. Under the new maps, they got 37 percent of the seats in Texas. So, very little change. But under the new map, there are no competitive districts. In fact, if Democrats got 58 percent of the vote, they would still really be locked into the same 37 percent of seats. And to put it more simply, Texas, you know, could turn deep blue and it is still — Republicans would have almost a 2-1 advantage in the congressional delegation. And it bears noting that, really, all of these gerrymanders are accomplished heavily at the expense of communities of color.

MARTIN: How does this work if the districts have to be of roughly equal size? How is this possible?

LI: You know, I think when the Supreme Court first imposed the equal population requirement in the 1960s, many people thought, well, that will be the end of gerrymandering because districts have to be equal size and there’s only so much, because before what happened is that the district was not equally populated. Some districts have way more many people than others, and that’s how people gerrymandered in the past. But it turns out that if you just sort of artfully draw lines, you can achieve a really bad effect. And Texas is, you know, a prime example where, you know, communities are split apart really very ruthlessly in order to achieve, you know, this dynamic, right, (INAUDIBLE) for example, Latinos in Suburban Dallas are pulled out of the district that they’re in right now and placed into a district that is mostly rural. And so, there are only a small part of the rural district. And so, that they will elect, you know, a Latino preferred candidate and instead, you know, it’s white rural voters who will dominate that district. And that’s really sort of how you accomplish this. And, you know, you really slice and dice and recombine voters in very artful ways.

MARTIN: Can we talk about Texas for a minute? Just talk about Texas just a bit more since you know it well. Like give us this example of how — what the effects of this extreme partisan gerrymandering in Texas have been, like give an example of how many districts do you think there should be that are competitive versus how many are there?

LI: Yes. In Texas, you know, Democrats really have been limited to about, you know, 36 percent, 37 percent of seats and, you know, you’d think a fair map would be somewhere closer to, you know, 45 percent or 48 percent of seats, you know. And, you know, I think this is true across Texas, these maps. It’s certainly true at the congressional level but I think, you know, you really are looking at the legislative level and perhaps it’s (INAUDIBLE), right? You know, if you had fairly drawn state house maps in Texas, there’s a reasonable chance that you would have a Democratic State House now instead of Republican State House. And if that were the case, it would be unlikely that the Texas legislature would have passed laws like the abortion law that it passed in 2021 that went up to the Supreme Court because Democrats would not have passed that law. But instead, because you have gerrymandered maps, you know, you are seeing really distorted legislative outcomes because a party that doesn’t — you know, the maps are skewed in favor of a party that, you know, isn’t really sort of Texas, right? In a lot of ways, Texas is very diverse. It’s one of the youngest states in the country. But that just doesn’t — isn’t reflected in the way that maps are drawn and the product of those maps

MARTIN: And what about voter suppression? This is something that has become — you know, almost a mantra and that’s — among Democrats and activists. This is not to, you know, diminish it but they have been increasingly alarmed about what they see as aggressive tactics to suppress the vote. Is — first of all, is that accurate? Do you feel that there has been a concerted effort to suppress the vote, to keep certain people from voting? And if so, what are they?

LI: Well, voter suppression really is sort of a cousin of gerrymandering, right? Gerrymandering, you know, is designed to predetermine what the election results are. With voter suppression is designed to is to make it harder for you to vote through any number of ways, you know, to make it harder to register to vote, to cut the number of polling places and to, you know, require you to bring certain limited forms of ID in order to vote. Voter suppression really is like a death by a thousand cuts. Like any of these things by themselves, you might say, well, you know, that’s not probably not going to have a significant effect. But when you look at it cumulatively, it really is a rolling back of access to the ballot box, you know, in really, I think, in response to the record turnout in 2020 if some of the, you know, demographic changes that are being reflected now in election results. And so, I think, you know, people — you know, there are people, frankly, in our country who are scared of the changing America and want to suppress it, you know. Now, in a rational world, what they would say is, gosh, you know, there’s a lot more black voters or Latino voters or a lot more Asian voters. We should go out as Republicans and go compete for those votes. We should try to figure out how we should win our chair of those voters by appealing to those voters. But instead, but what they’ve decided to do is, we’re going to try to negate those voters’ votes either through gerrymandering them out of power or by making it harder for them to vote.

MARTIN: But what about the whole question of, like, drop boxes, for example? I mean, this is an example of where Republicans argue that they’re actually trying to make things easier. In Georgia, for example, which is one of the places that the current Justice Department is looking at, that, you know, in 2024, major metropolitan counties with large numbers of black voters had 111 drop boxes. Nearly 60 percent of the absentee ballots that returned were placed in a drop box. Now, the new law mandates the use of drop boxes in all counties. But it places a limit on the population size or the number of early voting locations. So, the poor counties surrounding Atlanta would be limited to a total of 23 drop boxes. This is according to the Atlanta Journal- Constitution. Now, it is rare these days for people to kind of get in a room and say, we’re trying to keep black people from voting. I mean, you know, good luck with finding somebody to say that. So, how would you argue that something like this is really intended to be racially discriminatory?

LI: Well, I think you look at the impact on communities, right, and you look at sort of where the cuts are, at like many places around the country, for example, when you talk about polling place cuts that are occurring at the minority communities, right, you know, and the same thing, you know, you have to look at where drop boxes are and, you know, where — you know, and the reality is like — you know, like, for example, we saw really long lines, you know, heavily in minority communities, right, in 2020. I don’t think lawmakers enact laws ignorant of the impact or at least they shouldn’t. And, you know, when it’s brought to their attention, to say, hey, this is going to have a disproportionate impact on certain types of voters, you know, then I think you have to take into account. If you don’t take into account, I think that you can be held responsible for that.

MARTIN: And what do you say to the argument that this isn’t racial, it’s political? Even for people who are willing to admit that the intention here is to advance certain people over others, what they will say and I’ve heard Republican activists say is, no, this isn’t racial, this political. It’s our goal to advantage Republicans. And too bad, if more white people tend to be Republicans, sorry, but it’s not racial, it’s political. What do you make of that argument?

LI: Well, certainly, that is the argument that is going to be made in redistricting cases around the country this cycle, really, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling that partisan gerrymandering is OK. So, if you discriminate against political opponents, the Supreme Court has said that the constitution doesn’t bar that or at least the courts can’t enforce that. And so, you know — and even though those — you know, the resulting maps are like really racial discriminatory because the Supreme Court has set up its very artificial binary, if it’s politics, it’s OK, if it’s race, it’s not OK. And the danger is that, you know, if courts aren’t willing to probe closely, they may just get away with that because, you know, it is really, in a lot of ways, very false fight (ph), you know, it’s either race or it’s politics, right? It’s not some kind of fusion of the two, right? Why should either be OK, right? You know, like, why should political discrimination be OK? Like, you know, like, why should politics be that hardball. And particularly, when you look at states like Texas or Georgia where, like, the maps really have a racially discriminatory impact or in North Carolina. In North Carolina, a third of the black members of the North Carolina State Senate could lose election in 2022 because of the way the maps are redrawn. And fifth of the Biden members of the North Carolina State House could lose reelection in 2022 because of the way the maps were redrawn. You know, I think, you know, as we become a more diverse country, you really have to look yourself in the face and say like, why are we allowing this? Like why do we not allow all of America to really be at the table, you know, particularly, these groups that accounted for almost 100 percent of the country’s population growth? We already are a multiracial country. The question is whether we can become a multiracial democracy. And, you know, that’s the real challenge. And, you know, like we are not going to be a strong country if we don’t include everybody at the table.

MARTIN: And I recognize that part of your task, Mr. Li, is to describe what is, and your vision of what the way it’s supposed to work as opposed to the way it does work. But I’m wondering, you know, what the argument might be for those who just don’t care about this. I mean, who think that it’s just fine, you know, the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must. You know, (INAUDIBLE). And if they can make these maps work, if they can make these maps drawn to their favor and then they can hold on to power, then that’s perfectly fine. I just wonder, what would you say? Well, I would say two things. I mean, I guess, you know, first, you know, America’s only going to get more diverse as time goes on. It’s not going to stop getting more diverse. So, you know, at certain point, you have to deal with America as it is. And second, I would say, like, you know, like it ultimately — you know, like if you don’t sort of, like, start — try to compete for the votes of, you know, a more diverse America, you’re really, ultimately, consigning yourself to oblivion, right? There are districts, for example, in Texas and Georgia that Republicans — that — where multiracial coalitions are increasingly being really effective in, you know, electing candidates or coming close to electing candidates, and those are dismantled in redistricting. Minority voters are — parts of them are pulled out and stuck in a different district and parts are left in the district but they’re backfilled with more conservative rural white voters. And that may buy Republicans some time. But in, you know, a more rational poll, Republicans would leave the district as it mostly was and start say like, gosh, you know, we only — you know, we’re only — you know, we only lost this district by 10,000 votes. Let’s try to find 10,000 Latinos or Asians or black voters who will vote for us and win it. And so, they would start building their own multiracial coalitions to compete with Democrats’ multiracial coalition. But instead, Republicans have decided that they’re going to be the party of white people. But the problem is that white people are declining. You know, a number of white people in the country fell last decade for the first time in our country’s history, will fall again this coming decade by all projections. And so, you know, really like, you know, Republicans are playing a game, but they’re playing a short game because the long game, you know, doesn’t favor that kind of tactic. And the sooner they realize that, the better off they will be as a party and the better off we will be as a country.

MARTIN: Did Democrats gerrymander too? I mean, there are states in which Democrats do control the voting apparatus. Are they engaged in some of the same conduct?

LI: Lots of evidence in our history shows that both parties, if they have the sole power to draw maps will draw discriminatory maps. You know, like, I think, you know, like leaving, you know, power in the hands of politicians, it’s just — it’s a little bit too tempting not to use. And so, Democrats do gerrymander. You know, this decade, they will be at a disadvantage in that because Democrats control the drawing of only 75 congressional districts. Republicans control the drawing of 187. So, there’s a lopsided disadvantage. And, you know, many of the states that Democrats draw maps in are states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island where they already control all the seats. So, you know, there is no opportunity for Democrats to like (INAUDIBLE) seat in Massachusetts or Rhode Island because they already control everything. And so — and the other thing is, you know, like Democrats, like, you know, sometimes tend to be a little bit worse at gerrymandering. Both parties would gerrymander but Democrats tend to be a little worse at gerrymandering because they tend to be a little bit more aggressive when they do it. So, the essence of a good gerrymandering is that you don’t draw districts that your party wins by 80 percent because then you’re doing it inefficiently. What you want to do is you want to draw districts at your party wins by say like 52 or 53 percent, because then you’re spreading voters out and maximizing the number of seats you have. Democrats sometimes do that too aggressively and spread them out too thin. So, if there’s a big shift, sometimes they end up losing seats unexpectedly. So, both parties will gerrymander. Republicans have tended in the past, at least in the past, not very long. But Democrats have tended in the past to be a little bit less effective at it than Republicans.

MARTIN: Now, before we let go, we’re speaking at a time when Congress is battling over the freedom to vote act and the John Lewis voting rights bills. President Biden travel to Atlanta along with the vice president to give an address concerning these issues and to (INAUDIBLE) urge the Senate to move forward on this, to make this happen. What would these bills do to address — I mean, as briefly as you can, what would these bills do to address the issues that we’re talking about?

LI: Now, these bills would do a lot. You know, in terms of redistricting, they would ban partisan gerrymandering by statute, which close loopholes that Republicans are using around the country to defend racially discriminatory maps they’re claim that, yes, these maps have a disproportionate impact on Latino and black and Asian voters, but we really just discriminating against Democrats by having a statutory ban or partisan gerrymandering, that excuse would be cut off. But it also — the new bill also would strengthen protections for communities of color and really sort update the voting rights act, which was written, you know, 60 years ago, right? And so, the voting rights act written for a very different America. It was written literally for black and white America where there weren’t sort of like — you know, most the country was either white or black, there weren’t many Latinos and very few Asians. In 1965, when the voting rights act enacted, you know, maybe 7 percent of the country was Latino or Asian. It’s, you know, close to a quarter. Now, it will be close to 30 percent in a decade. Most people’s color now in the metro areas of the country live in the suburbs, not in the cities, right? And the voting rights act doesn’t necessarily work very well in the suburb just because it was not designed for that kind of world. And so, these bills would update that in critical ways and help make sure that our democracy works for the 21st century multiracial America that we have.

MARTIN: Mr. Li, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing this expertise.

LI: Yes, I’m glad to be here.