By STEVE BRAWNER
Which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives after the November elections? It becomes harder to predict each time a state redraws its congressional district map.
As the year began, the conventional wisdom was that Democrats probably would retake the U.S. House majority because the party that doesn’t control the White House typically does better in the midterm elections. Republicans were favored to maintain control of the Senate.
President Trump’s current low approval ratings, along with $4 gas prices, would seem to further improve the Democrats’ chances. Supposedly, Democrats can even win a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, although I’ll believe it when I see it.
On the other hand, it’s a long way to November, and things can change.
Furthermore, the redistricting efforts by both parties, with Republicans appearing to benefit more, have scrambled the picture.
States redraw congressional district lines after each census, the purpose being to account for population shifts. Since shortly after the nation’s founding, however, politicians have tried to redraw the lines to pack some voters in some areas and spread them out in others to help their own side. Courts, congressional action and common sense have constrained the process somewhat.
But a couple of things have changed.
This election, states are doing it mid-decade after having already done it after the last census.
It started with Trump’s successful push to get Texas Republicans to redraw that state’s lines to potentially increase their party’s congressional advantage from 25-13 to 30-8. California countered by redrawing its lines to potentially elect five more Democrats and give them a 48-4 advantage there. Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida have redrawn their maps. Virginia Democrats tried to do so until a court order stopped them. Had they succeeded, the state’s congressional delegation could have gone from 6-5 Democrats to 10-1 – in a state where Vice President Kamala Harris beat Trump 52%-46% two years ago.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a Louisiana case that weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required states to draw electoral maps to ensure more minority representation in Congress.
Louisiana’s governor responded by suspending the state’s congressional primaries, where absentee voting had already started, to redraw the map so a Republican would replace one of the state’s two Democrats.
Tennessee Republicans then split Shelby County, home of Memphis, into three districts, thereby increasing the chance that the state’s congressional delegation will go from 8-1 to 9-0. Alabama changed its map, but a court ruled the new one was racially discriminatory Tuesday. The state has appealed the case to the Supreme Court. South Carolina Republicans opted not to change their state’s map Tuesday after voting in that state’s primary had already begun. Georgia will decide in June whether to change its map for 2028.
With help from today’s technology, majority parties can now ensure not just their leadership in a state, but dominance. When this happens, the November elections become a formality in most congressional districts. The only elections that matter are the primaries, where a much smaller percentage of voters cast ballots. For example, in Arkansas’ midterms in 2022, voter turnout was 26% in the primaries and 51% in the general election.
General election voters often are simply selecting from, or in many cases rubber-stamping, the candidates the primary voters chose. The primary voters are the ones the politicians care about, and they tend to be more partisan than the general electorate. As a result, candidates must be partisan as well.
The result is a Congress composed of Republicans and Democrats who cannot work together to even pass a budget, much less a balanced one.
If all this redistricting means Republicans maintain control of the House, Arkansas will benefit in that its congressmen will retain their powerful committee chairmanships. Those would be Reps. Rick Crawford at Intelligence, French Hill at Financial Services, Bruce Westerman at Natural Resources, and Steve Womack at the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee.
But the damage that’s being done to the electoral process hurts us all. Elections are supposed to mean something. Voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around. Parties should win elections because they present a compelling vision and offer the best candidates, not because of redistricting. Politicians shouldn’t interrupt elections that have already started so they can redraw the maps. A state where voters are split 52-46 should not have a congressional delegation split 10-1 because of the way the lines are drawn.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens in November, which still matters in enough places.
Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 24 news outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.