The Article V Amendatory Constitutional Convention by Brennan Thomas E.;

Author:Brennan, Thomas E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Among the interesting charts Will provides is one showing that the number of Senators with twelve or more years of service has gradually increased over the last century until, in recent years it has reached almost half of that august body. Other charts demonstrate that about 80 percent of Congressional incumbents in both Houses are typically reelected.[4]

Will elaborates on the grievous damage to the Republic that has been done in the frantic chase to protect incumbents’ reelection. One battlefield on which partisan electoral combat is most vicious is the area of reapportionment. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) established the rule of “one man one vote.” That decision ushered in a new and exacerbated era of gerrymandering that would have delighted the man whose name was given to the practice of creating favorable election districts.

Elbridge Gerry was the Governor of Massachusetts, who, in 1812 signed into law a bill that created a representative district, the map of which resembled a salamander. The word “gerrymander” was coined by the Boston Globe as the caption of a cartoon showing the grotesquely shaped election district created by the Jeffersonians to defeat the Federalists.[5]

Gerrymandering was elevated to an exact science when the sloganized “one man one vote” decision in Baker v. Carr became wedded to the sophistication of modern computer technology.

Using the small units of measurement known as census tracts, and ignoring all boundaries of local units of government, it is possible to design districts that achieve preposterous mathematical equality. They are preposterous because they are attempting to locate human beings and human beings are not stationary. The State of New York, for example, after the 2000 census, created districts for its twenty-nine members of the national House of Representatives of 654,360 persons. Plus or minus 1 person! Thus the smallest district had 654,359 residents and the largest had 654,361 residents.

Considering the fact that it takes some months for the Census Bureau to complete its work and publish results, it is a practical impossibility to know the exact population even of a small, 4,000 person census tract, much less identify the location of 654,360 ambulatory human beings.

But the ingenuity and self-interest of man being what they are, the game of reapportionment is played with consummate skill by entrenched politicians. George Will includes maps of four of the most egregious specimens on pages 43–46 of his book. They resemble nothing quite so much as Rorschach Tests designed by a deranged psychiatrist.

Will gives us a peek at a principal reason for all of this by quoting the 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

42 USC 1973b A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members

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