COLUMN: Republican redistricting dishonest, disrespectful to voters
It's that time of the decade again. Democrats are gearing up for a legal battle over the recently passed redistricting plans for Michigan's Congressional and state legislative boundaries.
This is nothing new; five out of the last six redistricting plans have ended in a court challenge in Michigan and with the political tone of the nation turning increasingly partisan, this was to be expected.
Since the Republican Party controls the Michigan Supreme Court, they will probably come out victorious.
But should they? Is this legal challenge like those in the past?
Most of these past cases were knee jerk reactions by the minority party, filed in the hopes that the Supreme Court might side with them and a final map would come out that was better for their party.
This time, the potential cases have some real merit to them. The maps, especially the Congressional map, have some major flaws: the districts are not compact. The legislature has previously passed guidelines for redistricting, but the courts have ruled that these are not strictly legally binding. They have, however, ruled that there are some limits to how extreme gerrymanders can be, and non-compact districts made purely for partisan gain do violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
This year, the Republicans who control both chambers of the legislature drew maps that favored them, as was expected. And the Democrats would have done the same thing on some level if they were in power. But unlike previous years, this year's map has districts that clearly stand out as partisan gerrymanders. Districts 9, 11, 13 and 14 are all mangled messes.
The GOP claims this map was created as it is in order to fulfill the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, which requires that two of Michigan's districts contain a majority African American population.
These claims are baseless — districts could easily be drawn that fulfill the requirements of the VRA without mangling the political lines of Oakland and Wayne Counties.
In engaging in such partisan gerrymandering, the Republicans in Michigan have thanked the electorate for giving them a landslide victory by slapping them in the face and turned a well deserved victory into an opportunity to "cheat to win" in the next elections.
How can Republicans expect voters to trust them when they have shown they do not trust voters to reelect them based on their merits alone in 2012?
How can the Republican legislators say in good conscience that this map is gerrymandered in order to fulfill the VRA requirements, not for partisan gain?
The map adopted by the legislature and signed by Governor Snyder makes a mockery out of the political process, and it is stunts like this that lead to people disliking politics.
If taken to the courts, the plan should be overturned on the ground of violating the Equal Protection Clause, but whether or not they will actually do this remains to be seen.
