We need another Amendment

State legislatures were stripped of the reason to choose Senators for a reason.

In 1913, the United States ratified the Seventeenth Amendment, stripping the power of state legislatures to select U.S. Senators, instead subjecting them to direct election. It’s taken more than a hundred years, but state legislatures have taken back their power to shape Congress, this time by choosing members of the House of Representatives. The perpetual gerrymandering, aided by modern technology, effectively ends partisan elections for Congressional districts.

Word has it that Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger is going to further gerrymander North Carolina’s already egregiously rigged Congressional districts. He’s reportedly cut a deal with Donald Trump for his endorsement in Berger’s primary with Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. He’ll strip Democratic Congressman Don Davis (NC-01) of his seat to ensure it’s won by a Republican. If that happens, the North Carolina Congressional delegation will be made up of eleven Republicans and three Democrats in a state that splits down the middle in statewide elections.

Republicans have taken the power of gerrymandering to new heights, or lows, as it may be. They aren’t just redrawing rigged elections every ten years. They are redrawing them after every election cycle, gathering the new data offered by each election to shift voters one way or the other. Phil Berger knows that he has the tools at his disposal to end the last remaining competitive Congressional race the state. So much for democracy.

The gerrymandering wars began here in North Carolina. For twenty years, Republicans sued the Democrats drawing districts in North Carolina, even though the Congressional delegation roughly reflected the political make up of the state. There were numerous competitive seats for Congress every election cycle.

When they took power in 2011, Republicans used their power and new GPS tools to give themselves a ten-three majority in Congressional seats. Then-state House Majority-leader David Lewis famously said, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

Democracy has been battered. In North Carolina, for instance, the state legislature has rigged their own seats to ensure healthy Republican majorities that conflict with the political make up of the state. They use these lopsided, artificial majorities to control Congressional seats, stifling the voices and votes of people who disagree with them.

In some ways, Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame. They naively thought that Republicans believed in democracy. While Republicans were gerrymandering states like North Carolina with “surgical precision,” Democrats were pushing for nonpartisan redistricting committees. They believed that the public, including Republicans, would get behind efforts to make elections a little more fair. Republicans cynically understood that the public wasn’t paying enough attention.

Republicans have used gerrymandering to hold disproportional control of evenly divided states like North Carolina and Wisconsin. They’ve used their power to eliminate competitive races for Congress, giving the GOP a substantial advantage. And they’ve done it with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Founders initially believed that allowing state legislatures to choose Senators would make make them more beholden to their states and more resistant to populism. In other words, they would be more establishment than the rowdier House of Representatives. The Seventeenth Amendment came about because the American public became convinced that Senators, and the legislatures that chose them, had become corrupt and beholden to corporate interests.

The Founding Fathers never envisioned that the House of Representatives would be chosen or heavily influenced by state legislatures. Congressional districts were designed to represent the sentiment of the people. Gerrymandering has made sure that only the sentiments of the people controlling state legislatures are represented.

Republicans have become the embodiment of the saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We’ve reached the point that the President of the United States is horse-trading Congressional districts for endorsements. Republicans have undermined the spirit of the Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court, by siding with gerrymanderers, is encouraging anti-democratic behavior. It’s time for another amendment.