Why Are Extreme Abortion Laws Taking Over America? Blame Gerrymandering

By David Daley, Guardian UK

02 June 19

Republican state lawmakers use redistricting to push through hardline laws that aren’t supported by voters

ifty-four thousand votes out of nearly 4 million. That’s what separated Stacey Abrams from Brian Kemp in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, a sign of how closely contested this once reliably red, southern state has become.

Earlier this month, however, Georgia’s legislature responded to the state’s closely divided political climate not with thoughtful compromise but by passing one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States.

An April poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 70% of Georgians support the landmark Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion. The new state ban is opposed by 48% of Georgians and supported by only 43%. So why would the legislature enact such an extreme measure?

For that matter, why would Ohio, Alabama, Missouri and other states establish similar “fetal heartbeat” laws that are far more restrictive than their constituents support?

One important answer is gerrymandering: redistricting voting districts to give the party in power an edge – making it almost impossible for the other side to win a majority of seats, even with a majority of votes. Sophisticated geo-mapping software and voluminous voter data turned this ancient art into a hi-tech science when the US redistricted after the 2010 census.

Republicans recognized the opportunity. Democrats snoozed. Nine years later, they’re still paying the price, particularly in swing state legislatures. A little-known group called the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) launched a devastatingly effective strategy called Redmap – short for the Redistricting Majority Project. It dropped $30m of dark money into sleepy local races, flipped legislative chambers blue to red, and gave the Republicans control over drawing the vast majority of local legislative and US House seats – and with it, the power to remake the political playing field for the next decade.

Republicans took such advantage that they have controlled state legislative supermajorities in otherwise competitive states even when voters prefer Democratic candidates by hundreds of thousands of votes. This nullifies elections and insulates lawmakers from a majority that seeks to vote them out of office.

Despite lacking any mandate for an extreme agenda in a closely divided nation, Republican lawmakers have pushed through new voting restrictions, anti-labor laws, the emergency manager bill that led to poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, and now, these strict abortion bans. Electorally, there’s little that Democrats can do to stop it.

Just take a look at Georgia, where the ultra-competitive contest between Kemp and Abrams made national headlines and propelled the highest midterm voter turnout in the state’s modern history. But while that race was decided by just a handful of votes, it was a completely different story in the down-ballot elections for the state’s house and senate. Those districts were drawn to be so non-competitive that 112 of the state’s 180 house districts – and 33 of the 56 state senate elections – featured no major-party challenger. Voters literally had no choice at all.

Or travel to Ohio, the long-time midwestern bellwether. There’s also zero evidence that voters here have extreme opinions on abortion. Polls show that more voters are against the new “heartbeat” bill than for it, and Ohioans are clearly comfortable splitting their ballots in statewide races. In 2018, the state re-elected a pro-choice Democratic senator and an anti-abortion Republican governor. They divided their vote for the state’s house and senate about as equally as possible: Republicans won 50.3% statewide.

But thanks to what a University of Chicago study called an “uncommonly severe gerrymander”, barely half the votes provided Republicans more than 63% of the seats. Once again, there’s little that Democrats can do, simply because the maps were surgically designed to create so few competitive seats. In 2018, only six of 99 house elections finished within five percentage points. Democrats could have won them all and still finished far short of control.

In Alabama, meanwhile, a determined racial gerrymander packed black Democrats into as few seats as possible and diluted the African American vote. That legislature, seated after a sleazy money-laundering effort uncovered by the RSLC’s own attorneys, has passed the strictest abortion ban in the nation, one that polls show is too conservative even for Alabama. A recent survey found that only 31% of Alabama voters backed abortion limits like this one, which provides no exception for rape or incest.

This is what happens when so many races are non-competitive. It means that the only action takes place in party primaries. They tend to be low-turnout elections that favor the most passionate partisans. That has three key effects: it sends more extreme members of both parties to state capitals, incentivizes them to fear compromise or anything that might earn a primary challenge, and it insulates them from voters almost no matter what they do. Voters are silenced at the ballot box, and then can be safely ignored by their legislatures.

What, if anything, can voters do? It won’t be easy. Last November, citizens in four states – including Missouri, home to yet another radical new abortion ban – passed ballot initiatives or constitutional amendments that shifted mapmaking powers away from self-interested partisans and toward independent commissions. In Missouri and Michigan, however, despite more than 60% of voters demanding an end to politicians choosing their own voters, these gerrymandered legislatures have taken steps to undermine the new initiatives. Several other states this year have made it significantly harder to put initiatives on the ballot.

Four federal courts, meanwhile, have overturned entire statewide maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. The US supreme court, long reluctant to get involved in this political thicket, is expected to issue rulings in cases from Maryland and North Carolina in June. Whether or not the court takes action, it could take a generation to wash away the anti-majoritarian toxins that this decade’s partisan gerrymanders intentionally injected into our hijacked politics. Just as frightening: the 2021 redistricting cycle is just two years away.