by Chap Petersen
A couple years ago, I wrote an essay entitled: “Single-Party Government Didn’t Work in the Soviet Union, and It’s Not Working in Fairfax County Either.”
My goal was to point out the parallels in failing one-party systems.
But frankly the points were too obvious. So I didn’t bother publishing it. Maybe I should have.
The last couple weeks have been depressing. On April 21, Virginia voters by a narrow margin (3 points) approved a redistricting map which will create a “10-1” map for Democrats, by intentionally diluting the votes of rural white voters.
A week later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1989 Voting Rights Act violated the “Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by requiring states to create “minority-majority” districts, whenever possible.
The logic of the Supreme Court’s majority was unassailable: classifying voters based on race is inherently fraudulent, if not impossible in today’s America. (The modern reality of mixed families defies the precepts of racial classification). The reality is a bit more complicated, however.
With the striking down of the race-based districts, there is now an open invitation for Republican legislatures to redraw their maps, just like Virginia, and wipe out any Democratic-leaning seats, both in Congress and in state legislatures. It would make short-term partisan sense.
But it is a terrible idea.
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