Maryland Democrats will convene this August to propose a state constitutional amendment that could allow voters to disenfranchise their Republican neighbors in the name of democracy.
Democratic leaders in the Maryland General Assembly have called the special session to pursue another redistricting attempt. If three-fifths of the members of both chambers approve the proposal, Maryland voters could decide whether to redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that eliminates the only district represented by a Republican, Rep. Andy Harris.
Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) has long advocated redistricting. The Supreme Court’s decision to reinterpret the need for minority-majority districts in Louisiana v. Callais has renewed his efforts.
“Across the country, we are watching coordinated efforts to weaken voting rights, dilute Black representation, and bend the rules of democracy for partisan gain,” Moore said in a statement, “at the very moment when core protections of the Voting Rights Act have been gutted and the right to fair representation is under assault.”
Simply put, Moore and the Maryland General Assembly now seek to punish their Republican constituents because fair representation is under assault elsewhere.
“While a ‘constitutional referendum’ connote public participation and assent to the blatant disregard of established redistricting norms,” Maryland House Minority Leader Jason Buckel told the Washington Examiner, “the reality is that Maryland Democrats will undoubtedly write the referendum ‘question’ in a way that would falsely appear to the average voter to be innocuous.”
Buckel is referring to Virginia, where Democrats in a slim majority faction, 51%, stripped away the fair representation of their neighbors, 48%, to “temporarily” “restore fairness in the upcoming elections.” The constitutional amendment reinstated gerrymandered districts that Virginians themselves outlawed a few years ago to right the wrongs they believe Republicans committed hundreds of miles away.
The Supreme Court of Virginia struck down that state’s redistricting amendment in a 4-3 decision. Virginia’s constitution requires an “intervening general election” between two legislative approvals. But Virginia Democrats proposed the constitutional amendment after voters began choosing members of the second legislature.
Virginia Democrats unsuccessfully sought relief from the Supreme Court of the United States. They rebuked the state courts “for subverting the will of the people.”
But aren’t Virginia’s courts restraining the “superior force of an interested and overbearing majority” that James Madison warned against in Federalist No. 10?
The gerrymandering spiral of the 2020s has inflamed partisan passions over control of Congress. The post-2020 map battles in New York and Texas prompted California to respond with its own ballot measure. Courts blocked Virginia when it attempted a similar maneuver. Then, an April Supreme Court decision opened another front, with Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, and now Maryland joining the fray.
Courts and legislatures have become the principal battlefields in the fight over gerrymandering. Democrats, however, increasingly argue that disenfranchisement is somehow legitimate so long as voters approve it. We live in a “democracy,” after all.
In California, Proposition 50 overturned the state’s independently drawn congressional districts in an effort to counter Texas’s mid-decade redistricting. One might assume that only party leaders would champion such a cause and that ordinary citizens would hesitate to diminish the political influence of neighbors with whom they disagree.
They did not.
About 70% of California voters said party control of Congress was “very important” to them, according to an Associated Press Voter Poll. Eight in 10 voters who supported Proposition 50 said the new map was necessary to counter Republicans in other states, people they do not know and will never vote alongside. Democrats could now gain five additional congressional seats in California.
Maryland voters may be asked to do the same in November following the General Assembly’s special session.
“Maryland Democrats want to eliminate existing standards under state law so that they can create a map where their candidates are heavily favored to win in all eight of our congressional districts, despite the fact that they have barely a 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration,” Buckel said.
Of Maryland’s 4.3 million registered voters, 51% are Democrats and 23% are Republicans. A congressional map that eliminates Republican representation entirely would be wrong, regardless of whether it reflects “the will of the people.”
Our republican form of government exists precisely to restrain democracy in such cases.
“When a majority is included in a faction,” Madison wrote, “the form of popular government … enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.”
MARYLAND MAY FINALLY SEE REDISTRICTING ACTION – JUST NOT THE WAY WES MOORE WANTED
That is what Maryland Democrats are asking voters to do. Moore can portray his redistricting effort as self-defense against the Supreme Court’s “attack” on voting rights, but the fundamental act remains the same. A majority, organized as a faction, is seeking to strip a political minority of fair representation in Washington.
Maryland Democrats are mistaking democracy for justice and accelerating the nation’s gerrymandering spiral.
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