This is an opinion cartoon.
Cherry-mandering: Incumbent Alabama lawmakers are cherry picking their own voters. Sweet! But not everybody is happy about it.
Last week, the AL GOP talked about how they were all about minority voter outreach. This week, during the special session on redistricting, they made sure their favorite incumbents got to pick their own voters. No surprise, Black voters were randomly carved out of one district and placed where their voices would be diluted.
Related: Redistricting special session promises to keep Alabama in stitches
Related: Alabama lawmakers give final approval to new congressional districts
Related: Alabama Republican Party launches new minority outreach effort
Related: Three stooges of the COVID vaccine mandate crossfire
The lines of the new districting maps look cleaner, not as many straggly fingers reaching into nether regions, but the details are dirtier. It’s easier to draw people out of your district than it is to hear their complaints.
Excerpt from Alabama Political Reporter Josh Moon’s column:
“The absolute fringe of the parties is now creating policy and it’s tearing at the very fabric of this country,” said Rep. Chris England, who also serves as the Alabama Democratic Party chairman.
Now, you might think that that’s simply a Democrat crying because his party isn’t in charge. But that’s not what England wants — and anyone who knows the man would know he’d never want that.
What England — and a whole bunch of other people — does want, though, is to remove the politicians from this process. To stop allowing the lawmakers to choose their voters and instead incorporate a fair, nonpartisan panel that reduces redistricting down to numbers and county lines. Have the districts accurately reflect population trends and then let the chips fall where they may.
“This process … you’re not supposed to be able to design it so you get to keep districts,” England said. “That’s not your district. It’s the people’s who live there. And if you want it, you should go out and work for it. And if you can’t earn it, you need to go home.”
That’s fair, and you know it.
That’s something we can all agree on, right — that we want this process to be fair? Because it’s not now. And the numbers don’t lie about that fact.
In the 2018 statewide elections, which were widely considered a bloodbath for Alabama Democrats, in every race in which the Democratic Party candidate ran a real campaign, the margin of GOP victory was roughly 60-40. But let’s be very kind to ALGOP here and say that it’s 65-35.
Show me where those 35 percent of Democratic voters are represented in our state government.
I’ll save you some time. You can’t.
A big reason for that is because Republicans have drawn district lines in a way that divides up major cities, slices counties into multiple sections (Jefferson is in SEVEN pieces) and packs minority voters into districts in order to prevent them from affecting other races.
A perfect example of this is the west-Montgomery carveout that lands in the 7th congressional district, Rep. Terri Sewell’s district.
There’s absolutely no mathematical or common sense reason for this carveout. The rest of Montgomery is in the 2nd district. (I had a lady email the other day to say that the arbitrary line on the map cuts down her street. So she’ll be in the 7th, and the person across the street will be in the 2nd.)
But there is a gerrymandering reason: Carving out that section of Montgomery removes a large portion of Black voters from the 2nd and packs them into the 7th, where their ideas about the operation of the government they pay for won’t be so bothersome for a Republican in the 2nd on election day.
After all, why try to win over voters by talking to them and coming up with solutions to their problems when you can just draw those different-thinking people into another district? Is this part of the ALGOP minority voter outreach program they were talking about last week?
Bottom line: Politicians shouldn’t be drawing lines around their favored constituency. The people should have the Sharpie.
Check out more cartoons and stuff by JD Crowe
Anti-vax and pro-business? Alabama’s oxymoronic unicorn/elephant in the room
I was ZZ top’s drummer for a night and got kidnapped by groupies
Auburn coach Bryan Harsin is “Apparently Unvaxxed”
Relax, Alabama. Kay Ivey vows to never force us to cheat death
Biden’s vaccine mandate has Kay Ivey, GOP governors seeing red
Mobile high school football shooting: Gun violence is our cross to bear
Quit horsing around and get the vaccine
Jalen, Tua and Mac Jones: Is Alabama’s greatest QB room the GOAT?
Tribute to Nick Saban’s greatest draft team
Nick Saban’s rehab for coaches now includes his plasma
JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix.
