Part I: How Our Major Parties Have Shut Out Majority Rule
(Note: This analysis is technical, but not overly so, and worth knowing. Stay Tuned for Part II: How to Fix the Anti-Democratic Trend in American Politics.
As computing technology has improved over the past few decades, the two major political parties have colluded, often tacitly, to make US congressional and state legislative seats less competitive between the two parties. The mischief occurs during redistricting, mandated every ten years. Legislative redistricting has always resulted in gerrymandering, and courts have often intervened to put guardrails against gerrymandering against a minority group or political party. But, just as is the case with corporate monopolies, courts have failed to intervene to halt collusion to reduce inter-party competition within legislative districts at the statewide level. Today software can reduce party competition within districts to the satisfaction of Democrats and Republicans alike, and unsurprisingly, both parties and individual legislators revel in the practice. This has had powerful anti-democratic consequences for the entire political system, paving the way for the unprecedented attack on our democratic institutions during the Trump Administration. Most American abhor these trends but because both parties are complicit in them, you seldom hear about it. This needs fixing. Here's why.
The collusion game is simple. Most legislatures engage directly in their own redistricting, a serious conflict of personal and partisan interest in a matter that should favor the public interest. If as a Democratic legislator I wish to improve my chances of winning my seat after redistricting, this will happen if precincts that trend Republican in my district are removed, replaced by precincts that trend toward Democrats. A Republican in an adjoining district will be happy to shed her bad (Democratic) precincts in return for acquiring good (Republican) precincts in return. Net result: we are both happy and more likely to get re-elected. Notice that both parties have an equal interest in doing this for the entire state, since members of both parties, as a whole, are likely to be better off, and few will be much worse off than before. As in musical chairs, a few legislators may be stranded unhappily, as an incumbent may be squeezed in the interests of protecting the entire majority party. But over time it has been well documented that most legislative districts have become less competitive.
What's wrong with this? A lot.
Imagine an electorate composed of people of all kinds of political views, ranging from the extreme left (Commie Pinkos) to the extreme right (Fascist Pigs). If you count people according to their political views along a two dimensional spectrum from Left to Right you will find that in each district there are only a few Commie Pinkos and Fascist Pigs. Most people are more moderate. In fact most people cluster rather close to the middle of the spectrum. Shown visually, this looks like a bell-shaped curve. As you can see in the diagram below moderate views form the majority of the electorate.
Of course, a person considered "moderate" in Hobbs would be considered a Piggie in Santa Fe, and a "moderate" voter in Santa Fe would be considered a Pinko in Hobbs. But in each district you are likely to find a bell-chaped curve of preferences even though the center point in the curve may vary from district to district.
In the illustration above, assume that the bell-shaped curve on the right represents the distribution of preferences within the Republican Party, and the one on the left represents the distribution in the Democratic Party; that is, most Republicans are more to the Right and the Democratic Party is more to the Left than the average voter, represented by the bell-shaped curve in the middle. Since primary elections determine candidate selection, one would expect the winner of the Republican primary to have pitched her message toward the middle of the right curve (the vertical line to the right), the Democrat toward the left curve: that's where most of the votes are in each respective district. But after the primary election you would expect each candidate to retreat toward the middle of the middle curve, where you find most voters. The winner's voting record in the next election would probably lie closer to the middle of the middle than to the middle of her party's center because moving too far from the center would leave the winner vulnerable to attack by a more moderate opponent. Fifty years ago this pattern of shifting back to the middle after the primary was the rule, not the exception, and moderate policies were the overall result. The system as a whole favored bipartisan, competent, government.policy, and voters tended to be reasonably happy with the direction of the country regardless of which party was in power.
The Move Away From Majority Rule
As districts became less competitive due to collusion between both parties during redistricting, the rule of moderation began to collapse. If my district is more heavily Republican after redistricting, as a Republican I don't have to worry as much about pleasing Democratic voters as I look toward the next election. I'm likely to win without them and, should I try to please them I risk being challenged in the next primary by a more conservative Republican. My incentive to compromise is lessened while my incentive to be "pure" to conservative causes is increased. Many negative consequences ensued from this, including:
- Both political parties began moving away from each other despite there being no change in the preferences of voters! That is to say, both parties became less democratic.
- Legislators representing the tail ends of the each distribution--the commies and the pinkos--began getting elected--something almost unheard of fifty years ago.
- Norms of civility in legislatures were broken as legislators paid
fewer costs for screaming insults at the other side of the aisle.When
moderates tried to instill more calm they were often shouted down by
extremists on both sides.
- In each party moderate majorities found themselves outflanked by the pinkos on the Left and the piggies on the Right. This often led to legislative paralysis, as in the case of the US Congress, when the Senate and House were controlled by different parties. If your seat is safe, there is no prize for compromise, and over time, compromise even becomes a bad word.
- As these trends deepened, the rewards for a legislator to be a true believer to causes ever-more extreme came to outweigh the rewards for a legislator to insist on competent, non-partisan government. This tendency reached outrageous levels during the Trump Administration, which flaunted the lack of experience of top administrators and ignored the policy wishes of the vast majority.
- Because of the winner-take-all character of our election system, added to the tendencies in both parties toward the extremes, policy is increasingly divorced from the wishes of the majority: better education, affordable health care, reasonable gun laws, less crony socialism for the rich, etc. The last two Republicans to occupy the White House were each elected with fewer votes than their opponent. Politicians have found is is easier to mobilize the increasingly radical "base" for re-election by insulting the other side than it is to do the hard work required to pass legislation the public wants.
- The net result of all of this has been a highly polarized political system, with less compromise, in which loud, aggressive minority groups outshout the majority, and in which minority views become overly represented in legislatures. The news media incorrectly tells us the electorate has become more polarized (how many times have you heard the term "deeply divided electorate?" or "tribalism?") when in fact, electioneering practices have compartmentalized legislative districts such that moderate voters--the majority of voters-- have become increasingly disenfranchised as a result of electioneering practices that have deeply undermined the democratic foundations of the country and left most voters dissatisfied with both parties.
Voters should be suspicious of any trends in the machinery of politics that have the effect of disenfranchising the majority of voters in one district, let alone across the country. While New Mexico has been spared the worse excesses of these anti-democratic trends, they have definitely left their mark on the state.Key position in the leadership of both parties have now been captured by groups representing a minority of voters in their own parties. This year alone, two persons falling into the "pinko" side of the curve teamed up in a successful attack against two fellow Democrats, each of them among the most outstanding legislators of the past half century--Mary Kay Papen and John A. Smith. Both of them faithfully represented the majority of voters in their districts and in the state, who would fall into the middle-middle part of the curve. These pinkos also succeeded in ousting one of the most promising state Senators in recent times, Clemente Sanchez, attacking him for voicing the concerns of the majority of his district and the state. In the Republican Party a politician from Hobbs was re-elected party chair last week. He proved unable--twice--to win a statewide election due to his political views, which may fit Hobbs, but certainly don't represent the views and aspirations of the average Republican voter, much less the views of the average New Mexican. These are not good signs for the democratic health of the state.
