So, just so I’m clear, y’all are all OK with cheating now?
Rules don’t matter? Fairness doesn’t matter? Basic rights don’t matter? Not to anyone anymore?
This rush to cheat at voting in the wake of this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision further gutting the Voting Rights Act tells me that’s true. And boy, is that ever depressing.
That’s not sour grapes from a lib worried that “my side” is going to lose the gerrymandering race. I don’t think that, actually. If “my side” is the left side, I actually think Democrats are going to come out far ahead in the initial race to gerrymander, and then, after wiping the floor with Republicans in the midterms, I think it’s going to be even worse for them. Potentially something that will take a generation or more to recover from.
Thinking of an America in which we have a better chance to elect lawmakers who lift from the bottom, tax the rich more, focus on human rights and workers’ rights and generally encourage more kindness and compassion makes me extremely happy.
But not if we have to cheat to get it.
I don’t like that.
That’s not how this country is supposed to work. The better compromise is supposed to be the goal here. We’re not supposed to govern in a manner in which we shut out all input from the other side and consider that a victory.
It’s not.
It’s facism. It’s everything our founders sought to avoid when creating the rules that govern us.
When I hear a politician from Alabama proclaim that we should create maps that totally eliminate Democratic representation, I truly wonder why they hate America. Because that has never, ever been the way here. (And yes, that goes for anyone in any other state who believes it would be OK to eliminate all Republican representation.)
Yes, Alabama is a red state. It is dominated by Republicans. Voters here, despite decades upon decades of watching the state underachieve at every meaningful quality of life measure, have consistently chosen the more conservative lawmakers, and they have backed the more conservative party, no matter whether it was Democrats or Republicans.
But majority rule should never equal totalitarianism.
The voices of the minority are just as important in this state. They’re essential to the manner in which our government functions. It’s the very reason that America is not a straight democracy, why we don’t allow for simple majority rule.
This country has always placed an extraordinary value on the viewpoints of the minority—to the point that our government typically only functions if compromise between the majority and minority is reached.
To hear people in positions of power so cavalierly disregard that history is extremely depressing. And honestly, it only serves to reinforce the need for a system of governance in which the minority is valued.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why this is so hard for some people, particularly all of us who are not holding a public office. All any of us should want is fairness in our elections. All any of us should want is for our vote to count as much as the next person’s.
There are simple, fair, equitable ways to do this in every state. We could plug the parameters for creating fair voting districts into computers and have the solution in a second.
It would be fair. It would require zero input from partisan lawmakers. It would produce voting maps that both reflect the demographics of the state and individual districts and also maintain communities of common interests.
Why do we not demand this?
Because the result would almost certainly be an America that isn’t ruled by pockets of the extreme versions of each side. It would mean far less bickering and absurd pandering. It would mean way more compromise and actually listening to and working with each other. It would mean voting districts that actually make sense.
But most of all, it would mean that a bunch of people could stop pretending that cheating is OK.
