Opinion: Voters will see more attempts to undermine fair elections

The midterm elections showed that tens of millions of voters are concerned about threats to democracy and fair elections. An Associated Press report stated that the “future of democracy was an even greater factor than Roe for women voters.”

In state-level contests in which control of election administration was on the line, election deniers finished several percentage points behind their Republican colleagues who were not tied to the Big Lie — claims that widespread voter fraud have denied election victories to Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Maryland Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox was among those who lost decisively after backing challenges by Trump and others to the outcome of the 2020 elections. In the 2022 general election, the state’s voters rejected candidates who favored changes to elections and election laws based on false assertions that the 2020 results were illegitimate.

Voters who care about democracy have reason to celebrate. Millions of citizens talked to friends and neighbors, phone banked, door knocked and texted for candidates who would defend democracy. Millions of voters listened and split their tickets, yielding key wins for fair election administration in Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

These victories are one side of the story, but the complete picture is less sanguine. The Supreme Court has been undermining democracy regarding money in politics and gerrymandering since the mid-1970s with decisions such as:

• Buckley v. Valeo, 1976, in which the court ruled that unlimited independent spending to influence elections is a constitutional right.
• Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010, in which the court ruled that unlimited independent spending by corporations is a right.
• Shelby County v. Holder, 2013, which stripped requirements from the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Rucho v. Common Cause, 2019, which left gerrymandered congressional districts in place, saying that, “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”

These and other decisions create an environment in which candidates are more likely to feel they must kowtow to the billionaires and corporations in order to run competitive campaigns. We have less protection against voter suppression and racial gerrymandering than we had after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. Instead, we are plagued with hyper-partisan primaries and uncompetitive general elections.

On Dec. 7, the court heard arguments in Moore v. Harper, a case that stemmed from a gerrymandered congressional district map in North Carolina.

Gerrymandering is when a party holding power to draw district maps does so in a manner to diminish the opposing party’s representation in relation to its share of the electorate. Like majority parties elsewhere, Democrats in Maryland have a history of creating districts to ensure their candidates win by comfortable margins while limiting the number of seats in Congress and the General Assembly that Republicans are likely to win. But the latest congressional map approved by the Maryland legislature did not survive a state court challenge.

In North Carolina, registered Democrats, Republicans and independents are roughly equal in number. Nonetheless, Republicans got control of the legislature and drew gerrymandered congressional districts, which would very likely have given them 10 of 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The state supreme court ruled that the map violates the state constitution, and imposed a map that would give Republicans seven safe seats and a chance to win an eighth.

Republican state legislators sued, arguing that the U.S. Constitution’s grant of districting power to the state legislature must remain unchecked by the other branches of state government. If the court decides in favor of unchecked legislative power, it will unleash a host of possible ways for partisan state lawmakers to manipulate election procedures and administration and to discriminate against voters based on party. Election rules could swing wildly if the voters put a new party in charge.

Regardless of which party gains, partisan maps and partisan election rules are bad for democracy and for political discourse because they serve to discourage tens of millions of voters across the country who have no real opportunity to elect candidates who will represent their views. Fair maps force candidates to speak to all voters in general elections, instead of just to a partisan base.

Charlie Cooper is president of Get Money Out — Maryland, which describes itself as “a volunteer force seeking to get big money out of our political system and make elections fairer.”

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