Explaining the partisan difference

Reader Joe Ollinger forwarded to me a recent Washington Times summary by Anjali Shastry of a Democratic counter-proposal to Governor Hogan’s redistricting reforms.  On the heels of our latest Wicomico County Republican Club meeting that featured Walter Olson, co-chair of the state’s Redistricting Reform Committee, the timing is fabulous.

There are a couple great tacit admissions that we should take away from the Maryland majority’s plan. In essence they were conceding that, indeed, these districts were put together for partisan advantage. But rather than be contrite, they whine that they can’t “disarm” unless some other Republican state somewhere does the same. That condition may already be met: North Carolina had to postpone its Congressional primary elections in order to redraw two districts deemed to be inappropriate, and that is a state with a Republican-controlled General Assembly.

Of course, even that won’t satisfy Maryland Democrats who have thrived on the ability to redraw the maps to suit their purposes. For example, what are the odds that random chance would dictate 44 of the 50 Republicans in the Maryland House represent districts that are larger than the state average? And did the voting tastes of the state change so much that in two years (2000 to 2002) the state’s Congressional delegation went from a 4-4 split to 6-2 Democrat at a time when then-President George W. Bush’s popularity in the aftermath of 9/11 was at a peak?

People are fed up with the crap. While I question their wisdom in believing Donald Trump is the appropriate candidate to convey the point, there are millions who are tired of the political gamesmanship. Here in Maryland Larry Hogan rode into office as a centrist Republican, has arguably become the state’s most popular politician with the impending retirement of Senator Barbara Mikulski, and has decided one of his priorities is to make the redistricting process more equitable between not just the two parties, but voters all over the spectrum who may not like the two party options. I can’t argue with that. (It’s not like he asked to go back to the old system where each Maryland county had its own Senator, which times two is the method I would favor to restore balance to our state’s government by making sure counties have their interests protected. Instead of direct elections, it would be the county’s legislative body making the selections.)

And then we have Jamie Raskin’s “ranked choice” idea. This video probably explains it better than I can:

270ponents claim that RCV encourages turnout and discourages negative campaigning, insofar as it’s been applied on a local level. However, there’s an argument that voters won’t take the time to familiarize themselves with the multiple choices and that RCV can still be manipulated by the formation of slates.

Yet Raskin’s idea of multiple-candidate Congressional districts is already being implemented here in Maryland, a state which has a variance of House districts based on their overlaying Senate districts: some are three single-member divisions, some are divided into a two-member district and a single-member district, and others are completely at-large. In most of those at-large cases a single party wins and oftentimes the opposition doesn’t even fill out the ballot.

As is often the case, when Maryland Democrats don’t get their way they point the finger of blame at outside entities. Sorry, this one is on you guys.