Is Democracy In The US Dying?

It's a question that has to be asked ....

Free and Fair Elections In USA

 ... not just because of President Trump's authoritarian approach to the Presidency. Nor the vengeful sackings and prosecutions of Civil Servants, apparently for just doing their jobs, ranging from Capitol Hill police officers, Justice Department lawyers continuing to sackings such as the recent sacking of Bureau of Labour Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer for bringing bad news.

No, the reason why this question might be asked goes back to a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court way back in 2019 that declared that federal judges could not review extreme partisan gerrymandering of electoral boundaries to determine if they violated constitutional rights.

Previously, federal judges had been able to stop electoral boundaries from being redrawn to favour one section of the electorate over another. The dissenting 4 judges stated that nothing "... is more important than free and fair elections.”

Chief justice Roberts admitted in the majority ruling at the time that “Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust", but added that “the fact that such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles,’ … does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary.”

But the effect of this ruling was that there is no one standard across the US for what constitutes "extreme partisan gerrymandering," indeed it even apparently allows for race and religion to be constituent factors in where boundaries are drawn or seats merged,

And that's the key to why we can question, if US Democracy may be under threat ... for instance, in the UK, the electoral commission has no political input and doesn't draw boundaries based upon voting patterns, but just on trying to keep voting numbers per MP as even as possible nationally (or so we are told). 

But since that Supreme Court ruling, both Democrat and Republican states where no independent authority performs the task, have started or already redrawn boundaries (called redistricting in the US), based upon voting patterns etc to strengthen their own votes and candidates inside these states. Indeed Democrat states that handle their own redistricting such as Illinois, New Mexico and Nevada, have already manipulated electoral boundaries for partisan gain just as Republicans have.

The latest and perhaps most blatant of these actions is proposed in Texas, where Republican politicians are planning to carry out a case of extreme partisan gerrymandering by proposing a new boundary map before the US midterm elections next year. Allegedly this is at the behest of President Trump.

The intention of the proposed changes is to push a number of Democrats out of office and strengthen the chances that the Republicans also keep their thin majority in Congress. They expect that the new maps could increase their seats by 5 congressional seats, up from 25 to 30 of 48 seats in Texas - all in areas that President Donald Trump won the most votes in last Novembers election by at least 10 points.

This and the other attempts in other states could or can of course, be challenged in the local state courts but no higher than that. However it appears that so far no local higher court in the states that have already undertaken these dubious redistricting exercises have blocked the new boundary and seats maps.

In fact, such is the fear in Texas that the local higher state court will not intervene, that the local House Democrats have fled the state in a bid to block the Republican effort to redraw congressional districts in the Republicans favour ... by not being there, they prevent a quorum, so changes would be void if voted through in their absence. However this is at best a delaying tactic and leaves those hiding liable to fines and censure.

Other Democrats in majority states such as California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have said that in light of the Texas redistricting they too will consider redrawing their own congressional district maps, to add more Democratic-leaning seats to counter the new Republican congressional seats in Texas ... "We are at war" said New York Gov. KathyHochul as a rallying cry to respond against the Texas move. Similarly, in return other Republican states such as Florida have also suggested doing the same as Texas.

So we now face the possibility of each US state becoming locked into virtual permanence as either Republican or Democrat within just a few years, as each ruling party redraws constituencies in their state in an extreme partisan manner, to ensure it is likely to win the majority in the mid-terms and beyond.

Oddly this wouldn't lock the Presidency up as votes are by state wide tally, but could lock the Congress i.e the Senate and the House of Representatives, into becoming near permanently either Democrat or Republican, with only very occasional swings sufficiently large to break the near permanent deadlock, or worse both of them being semi permanently held by just one party.

This would then be the end of the concept of 'free and fair elections' and could even paralyse the US government when an opposing party President was in power if both houses were from a different party ... Or worse aid an extremist President if he was from the same party as both the House and Senate and the Supreme Court ..... a bit like now really.