Politicians Electing their Voters

Republicans enacting voter suppression tactics such as removing over 1,000 polling sites largely in African-American communities in the past 5 years, stricter voter ID laws, and drawing gerrymandered districts to dispel the power of the minority votes that happen to sneak through these draconian practices has allowed for more Republicans to take office, thus wielding their expanded power by further compounding voter suppression. This dark cycle has gotten a new boost after Trump spent his lame duck period moaning about fabricated election fraud, legitimizing voter suppression in half the electorate.

One of the ways this is going to play out is highlighted in the Times:

Bills in Arizona, Mississippi and Wisconsin would end the practice of awarding all electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the statewide vote. Instead, they would be allotted according to votes in congressional districts — which in Republican states are generally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. In Arizona, the Legislature also would choose two electors.

In the last election, the moves would have reduced Mr. Biden’s electoral vote total by 11 votes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/us/republicans-voting-georgia-arizona.html

2020 Census results will land and take effect prior to our 2022 elections. While states’ overall numbers of electoral votes will shift, what is more interesting is how particular states will end up drawing their districts. Some states have non-partisan redistricting committees, but more redistrict based upon whoever controls the state legislature, like Mississippi and Wisconsin. So the bills mentioned above that split electoral votes could be enacted after the states are redistricted in a gerrymandered way, further suppressing the people’s voice in not only their local elections but in national elections as well.

After 2010, tons of gerrymandering went down in redistricting. Some cases made it to the Supreme Court — such as PA and NC — and ended up being overturned, but that didn’t matter until 2018 and 2019, respectively. So the Republicans in those states got 4 good elections out of their faulty maps. Why wouldn’t they try it again?