The Blue View: Partisan redistrictingthreatens fair representation

By Eric Schildge

Originally published October 11, 2021 in Seacoast Online.

Our democracy is based on a simple and enduring idea: “one person, one vote.” Of course, it didn’t start out that way.

At our nation’s founding, white southerners rigged the system in their favor by demanding that the Black people they enslaved be counted as three fifths of a person when determining representation in Congress and votes in the Electoral College.

For decades in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, political bosses built elaborate “machines” to stuff ballot boxes and tilt the political scales in their favor. Now, in the twenty-first century, voters face new and ever-more sophisticated tools to suppress the vote and manipulate election outcomes. In N.H., the gravest threat to our right to fair representation is partisan redistricting, otherwise known as gerrymandering.

Rather than draw districts around existing communities, politicians use sophisticated computer algorithms to pack voters into ridiculously contrived districts where they are certain to be outnumbered by supporters of the opposing party. Oftentimes, this means splitting towns and even neighborhoods in half, and leaving voters to try to puzzle out why someone in a place like Durham shares an executive councilor with people living 100 miles away in Chesterfield.

In the case of N.H., this gives Republicans the ability to essentially guarantee that the majority of these districts will elect candidates from their party by canceling out the votes of their opposition. The practice is fundamentally corrupt, unfair, and undemocratic, and it is happening as you read this letter.

On Tuesday, October 5th, the state redistricting committee, controlled by Republican politicians, held a hearing in Brentwood to solicit public comment on the new maps they will draw this year. Many Rockingham residents came to demand a transparent process and fairer districts, and many more, like me, would have liked to attend. Unfortunately, the chair of the committee has declined multiple requests to allow for remote participation. This means that those of us with young children, mobility challenges, or other obstacles to attending in person have been excluded. What’s worse, Republicans controlling the committee have so far refused to share drafts of the proposed district maps prior to the end of the public comment period.

We cannot allow politicians to draw these maps in the shadows. The temptation to rig the system and pursue an unfair advantage is too great, and because Governor Sununu vetoed a bill for a fair and non-partisan redistricting process in 2019, there is no safeguard to prevent the Republican-controlled committee from canceling the votes of thousands of NH residents who want a voice in how they are represented in Concord.

Generations of courageous Americans have fought to protect the principle of “one person, one vote.” Here in N.H., that fight is fiercer and more pressing than ever before. If Republican politicians persist in their mission to subvert our

democracy by ignoring calls for a transparent process and fairer districts, then all of us must hold them accountable in the next election.

To watch a recording of the community input hearing held on October 5 go to https://youtu.be/qy-mMqzcbDQ. To contact all the members of the NH House Special Committee on Redistricting send an email
to HouseSpecialCommitteeOnRedistricting@leg.state.nh.us.

Eric Schildge is a resident of the town of Hampton and a member of the Hampton Democrats.