The political polarization tar baby snags the gerrymander rabbit

To reduce polarization and political extremism, some states got rid of gerrymandering by the party in state power and transferred power to independent commissions. The tactic is apparently backfiring and failing in at least some states that tried the experiment. The New York Times writes:

Independent commissions to oversee the redrawing of electoral maps were thought to be the solution to an age-old problem. Instead, they have become bogged down in political trench warfare.

In Wisconsin, a court battle over redistricting is already unfolding between Republicans who control the Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

In Virginia, members of a bipartisan panel were entrusted with drawing a new map of the state’s congressional districts. But politics got in the way. Reduced to shouting matches, accusations and tears, they gave up.

In Ohio, Republicans who control the legislature simply ignored the state’s redistricting commission, choosing to draw a highly gerrymandered map themselves. Democrats in New York are likely to take a similar path next year.

And in Arizona and Michigan, independent mapmakers have been besieged by shadowy pressure campaigns disguised as spontaneous, grass-roots political organizing.

[A]s this year’s once-in-a-decade redistricting process descends into trench warfare, both Republicans and Democrats have been throwing grenades at the independent experts caught in the middle.

In state after state, the parties have largely abdicated their commitments to representative maps. Each side recognizes the enormous stakes: Redistricting alone could determine which party controls Congress for the next decade.

In some states, commissions with poorly designed structures have fallen victim to entrenched political divisions, leading the process to be punted to courts.

New York Democratic state legislators, who can override the state’s independent redistricting commission with a supermajority vote, have disregarded the draft proposal that the commission made public in September. In New York, Democratic state legislators are likely to ignore recommendations made by the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission. 

Last week, Utah Republicans adopted their own maps, ignoring proposals from a redistricting commission that voters approved in 2018. On Monday, Washington State’s redistricting commission missed a deadline to finish its maps, sending drawing authority to the State Supreme Court.

For decades, well-meaning people saw independent commissions as a crucial way to eliminate gamesmanship that exasperates many voters and distorts American politics: the incumbency protection, the devaluing of people’s votes, the polarization and stridency that it all fuels.   

The poisonous divisions and intolerance that decades of toxic dark free speech has fomented has come home to roost. Extremists got what they wanted, including anti-democratic toxins such as deep social division, a broken democracy, lost of trust and legitimacy in democracy, the press, experts and political opposition, loss of compromise, and loss of political good faith in day to day operations. Included on the list casualties is partisan hostility to transparent, competitive, fair and honest elections. 

In at least 17 states that the ARP (authoritarian Republican Party) controls have passed laws intended to suppress non-Republican votes, and/or to allow state politicians, officials or legislatures the freedom to simply overturn election results the ARP dislikes. The lie behind that, the "stolen" 2020 election, fools no one maybe except some of the ARP elites and most of its rank and file supporters. America's radical right hates free and fair elections and it has been that way among elites at least since the 1980s. The 2020 elections were probably the last transparent, free and fair nationwide elections this country will have for a very long time, maybe forever. The ARP will not make the mistake of allowing that kind of election again as long as it holds power.

In their 2016 book, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels pointed out that well-intended attempts to make democracy better and more responsive tend to either fail to work, or have the opposite of the intended effect. Power in politics is elusive, subtle and it quickly flows wherever there is room for it. For example, in the case of term limits that many voters supported, power tends to flow from termed-out elected politicians and newly elected politicians to career bureaucrats and special interests, making governance outcomes even less responsive to the will of the people. 

In another example, ARP deregulation of businesses is always falsely sold by the ARP, the business community and radical right anti-government ideologues, as means to increase personal freedom and free markets to do good things like trickling prosperity down. In fact, the opposite is the norm. Power flows from government protecting personal freedoms via regulations to the special interests who were regulated. The newly freed business and religious interests (i) reward the politicians who freed and protected them, and (ii) become free to do bad things such as screwing consumers or trampling on civil liberties, which they do not hesitate to do.

Non-partisan means to draw non-partisan voting districts to try to keep elections more competitive and candidates less extremist is failing if the NYT analysis is basically correct. It seems to be correct. Given the stakes and how close the US is to becoming some sort of an aggressive Christian authoritarian autocracy-plutocracy, maybe it is time for blue states to get rid of the experiment. Red states sure as death and taxes are not going to protect transparent, free and fair elections -- they are clearly moving in the opposite direction of building the legal infrastructure for opaque, unfree and unfair elections.

So, for example, if California repealed its independent redistricting commission law and went back to the good old days of the gerrymander rabbit running free and wild, districts could be drawn to obliterate mendacious authoritarian freaks such as Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy from the House of Representatives. What is left of the ARP in California could be decimated and wiped out, which happens to be exactly what it would love to do to those evil, tyrannical, socialist-communist Democratic pedophiles, sinners, atheists, minority people and other deplorables. 

Questions: 

1. Should the CA legislature get rid of independent redistricting, return to the gerrymander and use it to push toxic authoritarian radicals like the mendacious, treasonous Devin Nunes and the mendacious, treasonous Kevin McCarthy out of the House? Or are those two politicians just valiant patriots fighting the insane tyranny and cannibalistic pedophilia of deep state, false flag, socialist-communist-atheist Democrats (or is that wording a bit over the top, if so, how much so?)?

2. Should Blue states pass Republican voter suppression and election rigging laws like the 17 Red States have already done and will continue to do if election results are not to the ARP's liking, or, are the laws the 17 states passed either (i) not voter suppression or election rigging laws, or (ii) actually necessary due to actual proven widespread voter and election fraud in the 'stolen' 2020 election? 

3. Does power really flow to wherever there is room for it and whoever has the wealth and/or power to take it, such as power to gerrymander voting districts or power to abuse consumers who were previously protected by regulations that got taken away?