The conflict between party machinery and the popular will: How electoral districts become weapons of control

“ How in the language of democratic theory, do great numbers of people feeling each so privately about so abstract a picture, develop any common will? How does a simple and constant idea emerge from this complex of variables? How are those things known as the Will of the People, or the National Purpose, or Public Opinion crystallized out of such fleeting and casual imagery? ”

“ There are excellent books on government and parties, that is, on the machinery which in theory registers public opinions after they are formed. But on the sources from which these public opinions arise, on the processes by which they are derived, there is relatively little. The existence of a force called Public Opinion is in the main taken for granted, and American political writers have been most interested either in finding out how to make government express the common will, or in how to prevent the common will from subverting the purposes for which they believe the government exists. ”

“ Our country revolted against hereditary rule, and put in its place elective government by the people; but, instead of a true elective system, giving fair expression to the popular will, we have got party government ruling systematically by caucus machinery, and defeating both the will of the people and the proper objects for which government exists.
Professor Smith characterizes government by party as a vicious agency, and enforces his view by convincing illustrations of its working in different circumstances ”

“ But the district mode of election, is far more inconsistent with the principles of our Union, than that by state legislatures; because, in that mode, state will, though one of the parties to the union, loses its whole influence; wherein an election by state legislatures, popular will retains an influence upon the election of a president, equivalent to its influence over these legislatures. ”

“ Universal suffrage, clannish races, social classes, diversified interests, seem to explain and justify the presence of the party “machine” and its boss. Otherwise races, classes, and interests are in helpless conflict and anarchy. But the true explanation is an obsolete ward and district system of plurality representation adopted when but one race, class, or interest had the suffrage. Forms of government are the essence of government, notwithstanding the poet. ”

“ POLITICAL PARTIES Our government is a government by political parties. That is, political parties control the government. Voters acting independently of one another cannot exercise much influence. There must be teamwork in political matters as in everything else. A political party consists of those voters who think alike and act together on questions of government policy, or in electing their representatives in government. It is a voluntary organization, entirely outside of the government and not recognized in our constitutions, but exercising very great influence upon government. ”

“ The action of legislators, elected to conserve the interests of the whole people, is determined almost solely by party considerations. The division of votes on most questions is along strictly party lines. As a means of affording discussion of the merits of the men and measures presented for popular suffrage, they are worse than useless. The candidates are all chosen by the managers, and the people have only the choice of ratifying at the polls the selections of the caucus. These are not accidental but inherent features of the party system. ”

“ The moment each one of any considerable number of local election districts developed such a professional political boss it was inevitable that they should begin to act together to direct and advise the politically ignorant voters of the larger districts how to vote when it came to the filling of a more important office in a larger election district. ”

“ The members of State legislatures who choose a senator, and the district electors who choose a representative, look to the man of their choice for appointments to office. Thus, from the President downward, through all the grades of official authority, to the electors themselves, civil office becomes a vast corrupting power, to be used in running the machine of party politics. ”

“ Men becoming infatuated with politics, the desire to hold office leads them from paths of rectitude. They lose their hold on legitimate business, and grasping for the bubble fame, go headlong to destruction. One man may succeed in reaching the summit of his ambition, but it is by climbing over the ruins of the nine hundred and ninety-nine fallen on the highway.
The fight for spoils develops bad passions, creates schisms in parties. Faction fights in both political organizations are so full of bitterness and so empty of principle that they disgust the honest voters ”

“ There are, of course, as many rival vote-directing organizations as there are political parties which have become established and have a name with any good-will attached. If two of these organizations are at all well matched and occupy practically the entire field, their leaders frequently make secret agreements according to which the governmental power is divided. ”

“ The aggregate majority would hold a right without the remedy, and the district the remedy without a right. But it is overlooked that majorities and their rights are creatures of social compact, and not endowed by nature with political power. They are compounded of men, excluding women ”

“ The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; ”

“ Competitiveness may be measured by factors such as a proposed district's past election results, a proposed district's political party registration data, and evidence-based analyses of proposed districts.
(4) No map may be approved by the commission or given effect by the supreme court if: (a) It has been drawn for the purpose of protecting one or more incumbent members, or one or more declared candidates, of the senate or house of representatives, or any political party ”

“ Disorganization of the party starts at the primary election. With money in hand to foot political log rolling accounts, a skillful and unscrupulous political manager of one party may emasculate and corrupt the primary of the opposing party, by votes from the ranks of the opposition who falsely registered their po- litical party associations at the county registry ; and thus name for a party a can- didate or candidates that cannot poll the strength of the party at the general elec- tion. ”

“ Of what value will it be to him to know that certain lines indicate a mountain range or river, unless he has an approximate idea of what a mountain range or river is?
For the use of the more advanced pupils of the higher grades, who see the relation of structural environment to man in his development as a nation, the relation of natural structural divisions to political divisions, these maps should have lines drawn upon them to indicate the boundaries of such divisions. ”

“ The most that they can be said to have shown is that sophisticated mapmakers can proportionally allocate Alabama’s congressional districts based on race in a way that exceeds the Federal Judiciary’s ability to recognize as a racial gerrymander with the naked eye. The District Court held that this showing, plus racially polarized voting and its gestalt view of Alabama’s racial climate, was enough to require the State to redraw its districting plan on the basis of race. ”

“ By affirming the District Court, the majority thus approves its benchmark of proportional control limited only by feasibility, and it entrenches the most perverse tendencies of our vote-dilution jurisprudence. It guarantees that courts will continue to approach vote-dilution claims just as the District Court here did: with no principled way of determining how many seats a minority “should” control and with a strong temptation to bless every incremental step toward a racially proportional allocation that plaintiffs can pass off as consistent with any reasonable map. ”

“ While enlightened nations of Europe are convulsed and distracted by civil war or intestine strife, we settle all our political controversies by the peaceful exercise of the rights of freemen at the ballot box.
The great republican maxim, so deeply engraven on the hearts of our people, that the will of the majority, constitutionally expressed, shall prevail, is our sure safeguard against force and violence. It is a subject of just pride that our fame and character as a nation continue rapidly to advance in the estimation of the civilized world. ”

“ It has been assumed that where political rights were possessed by all, the liberty of all would be secure; but, far from this being the case, we can not fail to observe that, "where so-called political rights are possessed by all, rights properly so called are often unscrupulously trampled upon." For example, "universal suffrage does not prevent the corruptions of municipal governments, which impose heavy local taxes and do very inefficient work, . . . does not prevent citizens from being coerced in their private lives by dictating what they shall not drink ”

“ The fate of democracy is, then, subordinated to the existence of a real public and impersonal spirit in the majority of the individuals: if this spirit does not exist, universal suffrage is only a strife of individual interests—it dissolves the masses into their atomic elements, then arbitrarily gathers up the atoms, and scatters them to the winds. ”

“ Political organization is to be understood as that part of social organization which consciously carries on directive and restraining functions for public ends. It is true, as already hinted, and as we shall see presently, that the two kinds are mingled in various ways—that each ramifies through the other more or less according to their respective degrees of predominance. ”

“ The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. ”

“ This is the foundation of our campaign, to focus on active citizenship, to create fresh political movements that will displace the control of the Democratic and Republican Parties, two apparently distinct political entities that feed at the same corporate trough. ”

“ When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. ”

“ Hence a disciple of the most republican member of the numerical analysis, is induced to bear, defend and applaud the crimes of his selected form, an abhorrence of which when committed by other forms, caused his preference ; and hence political parties are equally strenuous for the justification or correction of the same abuses, as they happen to proceed from their own or the leaders of their adversary. Both evils arise from the want of a worthy object on which to bestow our zeal. ”

“ It is not therefore matter of any astonishment, that most publick measures derived from authority, end in repentance.
Wherever authority guides a nation or a political party, there cannot be a national or party principle, opinion or measure. It converts nations into the engines of an aspiring individual or a faction, for enslaving themselves; and parties into beasts, to be ridden by a few artful men into office. ”

“ Any one, who looks through these facts and facts akin to them for the truth they imply, may see that forms of government are valuable only where they are products of national character. No cunningly-devised political arrangements will of themselves do any thing. No amount of knowledge respecting the uses of such arrangements will suffice. Nothing will suffice but the emotional nature to which such arrangements are adapted—a nature which, during social progress, has evolved the arrangements. ”