The Republican Party “represents about half the country,” according to a recent column by conservative commentator Rich Lowry.
No, it doesn’t. Neither does the Democratic Party.
Our two “major” parties are not so major these days. Each represents only about 25% of the total electorate, according to a Gallup poll taken in mid-January. Half of American voters identify themselves as independent.
That poll counted voters’ self-identification, rather than official party registration. Almost half the states don’t register voters by party, so self-identification is more accurate than registration.
In New Mexico, where we register by party, the numbers are somewhat higher: 44.9% Democrat, 31.3% Republican, as of January 29. Independents or “decline to state (DTS)” were 21.7% and a smattering were Libertarian or minor parties.
We can speculate that some voters register with party affiliation just so they can vote in a primary. An unknown percentage would switch to DTS if they could retain the right to vote in primaries.
The structure of our election process gives enormous advantage to established major parties, as if they have higher status than everyone else. They get top billing on the ballot, and they get districts designed for the convenience of incumbents. It’s time to start changing that.
A few bills this year address these inequities. One would establish open primary elections, allowing independents to vote in any major party primary. The rumor mill tells me that bill has been held up due to technical problems and might not move very far this year.
The potential bright spot is the bill that would change the way New Mexico draws its districts, House Bill 211. The state legislature draws districts for Congress, its own two houses and the state Public Education Commission. Those districts have to be redrawn every 10 years, based on population changes as reflected by the decennial census.
Customarily, the legislature has taken charge, hiring consultants to analyze the population data and draft options. This has been highly political, especially since legislators are charting their own future electability. Districts have been drawn so that each district is majority Democrat or majority Republican. General election outcomes are almost a foregone conclusion, but the setup is ripe for an incumbent to be challenged in the primary. This is the act of gerrymandering that has led to our current state of political extremism.
There has long been a “gentleman’s agreement” to allow incumbents to keep their constituencies. Unless absolutely unavoidable, no two legislators will be placed in the same district and therefore forced to run against each other. But if they have to, due to population shifts, the two who get stuck in the same district will be members of the minority party.
HB211 is based on the report of a Redistricting Task Force sponsored by the respected good-government organization New Mexico First. It proposes creating a multi-party Redistricting Commission including two members “appointed by the state ethics commission, who shall not be members of the largest or second largest political parties in the state.” Independents!!
The Commission would draw up a number of possible redistricting schemes and the legislature would choose one. Legislators would have to pick one of the choices offered without introducing amendments. In other words, prohibit legislators from playing politics by altering a map.
The bill requires the commission to use “communities of interest“ as a major criterion and prohibits the adoption of district plans “to favor a political party or incumbent.”
The bill would have to be passed this year because redistricting itself must be done this year.
Redistricting the old-fashioned way is nasty, vicious and extremely partisan. There’s a growing national mood to adopt this approach: a big step to having voters select their representatives instead of having incumbents select their districts.
Triple Spaced Again, © New Mexico News Services 2021