I have written previously about how, after more than a decade of gerrymander success, the state GOP legislatures have become drunk with power. They no longer feel answerable to their own constituents, since they have gerrymandered themselves to a permanent majority.
That’s true up to a point, but it’s also a total fallacy. Just a brief tutorial on state gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is an art. It does no good to gerrymander a map where GOP incumbents are in a +20 red district. This is a waste of precious votes. The object is overall quantity, not crushing district superiority.
The object isn’t just safe districts, it’s creating the maximum number of safe GOP districts. Which normally means engineering the district to a 2-3% red majority. Enough to be safe through normal voter fluctuations, but not wasting any unnecessary votes.
But what happens if a GOP incumbent, or the state GOP does something that crosses a line for their own constituents? Even if the district electing a Democrat may be a long shot, could it lead to a moderate GOP challenger in the primaries that turfs the arrogant incumbent out?
Kansas is a poster child for this on abortion. Kansans wanted their abortion rights intact. Instead the blood red Kansas legislature moved towards an Orwellian abortion law. The constituents rose up and crushed the signature process to put a voter referendum to enshrine abortion rights on the ballot. The GOP tried an end run by putting the referendum on the primary ballot, where they expected the low turnout GOP base to defeat it. Instead the ballot measure passed by a 59-41 ratio. And most importantly, don’t blame the Democrats, they only account for 44.7% of the Kansas voting roll.
And right now, there are two currently GOP dominated states that are about to put this theory to the test. In Iowa, the GOP Governor just called the legislature back into a special session to pass a restrictive 6 week abortion ban. An identical bill passed in 2018, but Roe v Wade knocked it down. Now that Roe is toast, they’re resurrecting the abortion zombie law, hoping it will take effect.
Here’s the problem. In recent polling, 61% of Iowa voters favor abortion being available on demand in most or all cases. But when you refine that to Iowa women, that number jumps to 70%.In 2022 the Democrats statewide ran hard on abortion rights, but at that time the 2018 law was as dead as Paddy’s pig, and the GOP avoided it like kryptonite. Now they want to put the band back together, and ram it down the resistant throats of Iowa voters.
Former uber swing state Ohio, which has veered more and more red recently, already has a restrictive 6 week abortion ban. Which took a Goliath sized black eye when an 11 year old rape victim had to put together the scratch to travel to Indiana in order to obtain an abortion. The story was national news for weeks, and Ohio took the hit.
In response the Ohio residents absolutely smoked the signature requirement to get a pro choice referendum on the 2024 ballot. Nothing the GOP can do about that. So the Ohio legislature proposed and passed a referendum of their own, requiring a 60% super majority to pass a voter led referendum, as opposed to the current simple majority. And to gild the lily, they called for a special election in August to decide the matter, counting on high single issue GOP voter turnout, and little interest in a single issue special election in the hottest month of the year to sway the tide.
Personally I think that the Ohio GOP is bout to step on land mines with both feet here. The pro choice groups put together more than double the number of signatures they needed, making niggling over individual signatures moot. And they’re hyper organized as well as pretty well funded. Count on them to beat the bushes, not only door-to-door, but on media advertising to maximize turnout for the special election. And if they win, they’ll use it to hammer GOP legislature incumbents over the head with going into 2024.
Which begs the question I asked in the title. While most people espouse various political beliefs, when push comes to shove, they tend to vote their pocketbooks. That’s why the Democrats rolled 40 seats in the House in 2018, they met the voters where they lived, and talked to them about the issues that mattered to them, and offered real world solutions.
Make no mistake, abortion is once again going to be one of the driving factors in the 2024 election. And as I said earlier, the average gerrymander in a district, either state of US House is about 2-3%. And with the strength of emotions on the pro choice side, it wouldn’t take much for arrogant GOP incumbents to either be turfed out in the primaries, or traditional GOP families to vote their bodily autonomy rights, and elect hard charging pro choice Democrats instead. This could be a rocky ride coming up.
I kind of hope that the OH GOP’s little sneak maneuver gets them in court. Usually, when a law gets passed–especially involving election issues–any changes CANNOT apply to any upcoming election or referendum. Yes, the legislature has the right to change “requirements” but only if they are necessary and NOT done so blatantly intentional to tip the scale. If the referendum passes with a simple majority, you should expect the people–through orgs like the ACLU, etc–to file a suit overturning this power grab. (Really a suit should already be in the courts but I can see a court refusing to hear the case since no one has yet been affected by the action.)
I only thought about this after closing out but, given the fact it appears that SCOTUS recently made it legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community based on nothing more than a “what if” case, maybe a suit against the OH legislature’s power grab could go ahead.
Be interesting to see what these states do as well as the other ‘pube-led ones that have imposed draconian abortion legislation on the citizens of their states. I do not think the state legislators face quite the same voter disapproval as the federal ones do. I guess we’ll see.
Thank you for another incisive and illuminating fact-based analysis.
Yes the gerrymandering gop. This abortion issue is going to bring that to light. All women should look at this and wonder how they are going to vote not only now but in the future. The clowns on the right aren’t satisfied in a lot of instances with 2-3%. They want a safe 20-30% and women are finally stepping up to the ballet box and seeing the news and watching what’s going on and not liking that they are losing on things that should be a slam dunk. And forgive me but you have that age old adage, A Woman Scorned! And after this I guarantee you will see changes in elections.