Stolen elections
Sometimes, it’s what’s legal that's a crime
You’ve read about voter suppression and the threats to democracy. You know that one party is trying to steal elections with unfair practices. You know that voters are being ignored and The New York Times is outraged.
Yep, you know all about what the Democratic party is doing in my home state of New York - stealing half of the state’s seats in Congress from the Republican party. In the new map for US Congressional elections in New York, based on nothing more than love of power, Democrats are cutting the number of Republican-majority districts from 9 to just 4.
It’s not fair. It’s not nice. And if you care about the health of our democracy, you understand that cheating the other party out of a reasonable say in our government might feel like a smug victory one season, but inevitably backfires in another.
And you don’t have to believe just me about it. The famous, non-partisan Cook Political Report wrote an article yesterday slamming the power grab: “Democrats Move to Purge Half of New York’s House Republicans.”
Even the New York Times sounded alarms about it, criticizing a map that "gives Democrats 85 percent of the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic."
Regardless of your political preferences, this type of bad behavior and legal cheating ought to make you mad.
Most of all it matters because your votes make the lawmakers, the laws, and the policies, and that impacts your bank account, your kids’ futures, and your lifestyle. This stuff is important.
In New York State, which, let’s be honest, is a blue, blue state, Republicans earned about 37% of the vote for Congress in 2020. OK, not really close to half, but a good portion. The Democratic Party of New York, home of national heroes like FDR and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has almost twice as many votes. So it’s perfectly reasonable they should get about twice as many seats.
To be fair to the voters of New York state, with 37% of the vote, about 10 of the districts should be majority Republican. In fact, at this moment, the number is 9. Not entirely fair, but hard to cry that it is an unprecedented foul.
So a reasonable, fair approach to New York’s representation in the US Congress would be to continue at about this same level. 9 seats, maybe 10 if we’re being strictly fair, maybe 8 if we’re allowing for the fact that people are flawed.
But instead of something fair, or almost fair, the new maps, proposed by the majority party, cut Republican districts down to just 4 out of 26 Representatives. That’s a 50% reduction based on nothing more than greed for power.
For our two-party system to work well, there needs to be a sense of good citizenship. Fair play. The knowledge that being civilized means not pressing every advantage just because you can. Restraining yourself from being a bully. A desire to play nice in the sandbox with fellow citizens even when you disagree with them.
Sounds like obvious stuff that should be easy for adults to agree on. It’s what we ask of our kids and it’s what we should expect of ourselves.
But that’s not what’s happened. Even though it’s the same state, same voters, same parties, the Democrats are being bullies and making up a completely different result.
Is this how it should really work? Because one party draws different squiggles on a map, the other party loses? They simply take away 50% of the seats from the (slightly) smaller party “just because?”
That’s not fair, that’s not free, that’s not how democracy works – that’s stealing an election before it starts.
And while political stuff is always sharp elbows and mud wrestling, in terms of sheer numbers of seats involved, this New York steal is the biggest swipe of seats away from any party in any state in the whole country. It’s sad to see New York #1 – it’s a statistic I wish my state weren’t leading in.
One thing is for sure, the next time a politician or pundit gets on their soapbox and claims they’re just trying to make elections fair, ask them where they were when democracy was stolen in New York. Their silence will speak volumes.
And where is the outrage of what Republicans are doing in WI, NC, AZ and particularly TX, where I live? Spare me your "love for democracy" cry when your opponent starts doing what you have been doing for a long time.
You’re right in that this type of gerrymandering shouldn’t be allowed to happen. However, are you also complaining about the massive amount of gerrymandering done by republicans since the 2010 census? Or the continuing gerrymandering done by republicans as was just done in Texas, for example, with the new seats the state picked up? I didn’t see any of that in your post.
I didn’t see any mention of the voter suppression aspects of the more than 30 new laws passed in republican controlled states to curb early voting, shorten voting periods, cut out Sunday voting, curb voting at drop boxes, curb mail in voting (which has been used successfully by several states for decades and suddenly its a bad thing), or make it illegal to give someone a bottle of water or any food after they’ve been made to wait for hours to vote? The hypocrisy of doing these in the name of election security is such a lie (given the lack of voter fraud) that some state legislature reps have been caught talking about the real reason for these changes; stopping democrats from voting. Didn’t see your complaints about the unfairness to voters for these changes. Why is that? Simple answer: Those restrictions and massive gerrymandering by republicans help them to keep seats in Congress. However, when democrats try to copy what republicans do, it’s suddenly wrong. This is the very definition of hypocrisy and the continuing efforts of the minority imposing its will on the majority.
Yes, both sides, in the past, did some gerrymandering. However, what happened in 2010 and has continued (on the republican side) was an order of magnitude above what was done in the past and it was planned and well executed in the republican controlled states.
Also, you don’t see democrats passing laws to put barriers in the way of republican or any voters.
Voting is the basic RIGHT of the citizens of our country and republicans are so concerned about keeping control, because your policies are now nearly nonexistent, that they are literally passing laws to make it more difficult to exercise that right. And to be clear, it’s not a privilege to be able to vote, it’s a right. So arguments that talk to “making a little more effort” are completely disingenuous and hypocritical given the true reasons for these voting barriers and at which voters they are aimed.
What was done in NYS is not right either, but for you to complain about it, using the very same complaints about what republicans have openly done since 2010, is the height of hypocrisy. If it’s still possible, you should be ashamed of putting this type of propaganda out to your readers.