Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991 TAG: 9104150250
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK QUINN, DONALD J. SIMON and JONATHAN B. SALLETT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The process began with the 1990 Census. Virtually every congressional - and state legislative - district in the nation must be redrawn so as to meet the Supreme Court's 1963 "one person, one vote" requirement.
With so much at stake, redistricting has never been easy. But the 1991 exercise could turn on an entirely new question in American political life: whether groups of people in our society - especially racial and ethnic minorities and political parties, but possibly even special interests - have a legal right to some measure of proportional representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the state legislatures.
Put another way, does an identifiable group with, say, 20 percent of the population - whether African-American or Hispanic, Republican or Democratic, anti-abortion or favoring abortion rights, environmentalist or feminist - have a legal right to 20 percent of the legislative seats in its state? Does the Constitution contemplate politics by proportional representation?
The debate will arise in two contexts:
Some will argue that Congress's 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act entitle racial minorities to congressional and legislative seats roughly proportionate to their population. Republicans will exploit this argument wherever they can to pack minority voters into new, largely minority districts and, in the process, rob current Democratic representatives of a sizable part of their core support.
Political groups - Republicans, perhaps some Democrats and conceivably specific interest groups - will claim they are entitled to a plan that gives them a share of seats that closely reflects their statewide voting strength. This claim will be made on the heels of a decision by the Supreme Court in 1986 that "partisan" gerrymandering can be unconstitutional.
The original Voting Rights Act of 1965 required simply that minority-group members have an equal opportunity "to elect representatives of their choice." In the 1982 amendments, Congress went further and made illegal any political process, including redistricting, that has a racially discriminatory effect.
Congress said the amendment creates no "right" to proportional representation. But many people see considerable tension, if not contradiction, in these two dictates.
Must majority-black or majority-Hispanic districts be created merely because it is possible to create one? If so, no matter what the historical and political circumstances, doesn't this amount to a de facto right to race-based proportional representation? But if not, how can it be said that the minority group has an equal opportunity to elect representatives of its choice?
In an exercise of profound irony, the GOP has lately decided that the Voting Rights Act might be a good thing after all - at least as far as redistricting goes. With offers of money, computer software and other assistance, the GOP is encouraging minority groups to use the Voting Rights Act to seek new seats.
That seems unobjectionable. But the Republican hope is to produce largely minority districts surrounded by largely white districts, with a net gain for the GOP. The best Democratic strategy is to pre-empt the Republican offers by creating minority districts that maximize overall Democratic strength while fully meeting the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.
The critical issue then becomes how large the minority population must be in each minority district. Republicans want it to be very large, so that surrounding districts are less Democratic. But packing these districts would amount to wasting minority votes and thereby would undermine the essential goal of the Voting Rights Act: to maximize minority political influence.
Will this require partisan map-making? Of course. But that does not, in and of itself, taint the process. Politics in redistricting is like the spice in a good recipe: In the right amount, it gives the process its essence, its fulfillment of the democratic ideal.
In 1986, though, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that a constitutional violation may exist where redistricting has an egregiously partisan political effect. This ruling could greatly alter the distribution of political power in America - especially if liberally expanded by the Reagan-Bush judiciary.
If misunderstood or exploited, the decision could move our political system in the direction of proportional representation based on ideology - a theory of representative government never before accepted in this country.
Taken to its extreme, proportional representation would create a highly fragmented multiparty system common to many parliamentary countries. It encourages narrow interests and single-issue movements. If Democrats and Republicans have to be guaranteed representation, what about liberals, conservatives, anti-abortionists, "greens," "LaRouchies"?
In Congress, guaranteeing representation to the movement of the day would invite parliamentary paralysis. Coalition government would replace majoritarian government. Proportional representation promises instability just as surely as it promises "fairness" - and it certainly is not the role of the Supreme Court to push our system down this path.
Jack Quinn, Donald J. Simon and Jonathan B. Sallett are Washington lawyers who advise U.S. House Democrats on reapportionment. The Washington Post
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB