Which states should the Democrats run these anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives?
Putting up a series of initiatives Republicans despise like universal health care would be a very good way to turn a wave election into yet another Democratic defeat.
Keep your eye on the prize. This election should be about de-fanging Trump, right? Turn it into another social justice class war, and you may not get even that.
Ohio has an exceedingly good chance of passing one related to US Congressional districts next month. It’s on the ballot for their primary as Issue 1. It’s still a partisan process but it includes specific protections for the second largest party, mandatory public hearings, and explicit rules that constrain districting options.
Like I said, IMO it’s got a high chance of passing. It was put on the ballot as a legislatively initiated constitutional amendment. Both parties voted for it by a large majority. It’s strongly supported by the Republican governor. A similar issue (it didn’t include the legislature within the process but had similar controls) for state legislative districting was passed in 2015 with over 71% of the vote. It’s not a Democratic party effort or something that relies on a Democratic turnout wave.
I also suspect that it’s an initiative that Wesley Clark might consider voting against if he was in Ohio. The rules for districting are geographically oriented. They limit splits of counties and cities. Given the distribution of the electorate, that essentially locks in a small Republican advantage if you compare statewide vote totals to seats won. Since that’s been the measure of fairness he seemed to strongly support in several threads, this measure might be problematic for him.
I don’t think Prop 8 was that much of a surprise. A lot of Blacks and Hispanics who happily voted for Obama are still socially conservative and opposed same sex marriage. In Illinois, the black churches fought same sex marriage ferociously and put tremendous pressure on black Democrats.
The state-level anti-gerrymandering issue in Ohio three years ago (wow, was it really that long ago?) was a horrible, clumsy kludge… but it was still a vast improvement over what we had, and so I voted for it.
And yes, natural demographic patterns do tend to lead to an inherent Republican advantage, unless you take active efforts to counter that. I’m not exactly happy with that fact, but I can accept it, as long as it isn’t deliberately engineered to that result, as it has been with gerrymandering.