Gerrymandering MD about to do it again

First District Congressman Andy Harris, a Republican, says Democrats from across the Chesapeake want to control the whole state and are trying to eliminate Maryland’s only Republican-held congressional seat by redrawing his district.

Well, gee whiz, that’s a big surprise, considering that both parties having been doing their best to make the country’s two-party system even less effective than it has been in recent years.

Unlike his party’s leadership, however, Harris has argued that the kind of gerrymandering Maryland’s Democrats are pursuing is just not right, just like it was or is not right in Republican-controlled Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama.

Neither is it right in California or New York or roughly a dozen other states where Democrats aim to retaliate against Republican redistricting efforts.

None of this has anything to do with fairness, of course. This is purely a matter of political self-interest by two parties whose goal is to silence the half of the voting population with which they disagree. It’s a simple, if undemocratic, tactic: if you can’t win over the public and beat the opposition with ideas and honest communication, you do it by splitting up voting majorities with redistricting.

This is what the Democratic-led General Assembly proposes to do in its Aug. 3-5 special session: redraw Maryland’s First Congressional District so Harris—and any subsequent Republican—has a more difficult path to victory.

It’s just more of the hyper-partisanship that’s ruining the country, and it’s wrong—regardless of who knocked over the first domino in this tit-for-tat race to redistrict. Just to be clear, though, it was the GOP push in Texas that took this fight nationwide.

Regardless, voters of both parties are being told that unless they agree with the party in power, they do not deserve to be heard. That is not democracy, nor is it the foundation of a representative republic. It is a cynical attempt to force a single set of beliefs onto the public, and it stinks.