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Anti-gerrymandering campaign in Oklahoma hits new roadblocks

Oklahoma map
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Geoff West
By Geoff WestMar 02, 2020
Geoff West

Geoff West is a staff writer at The Fulcrum, where he covers voting and voting rights, civic education, civil discourse and disinformation. Email:geoffwest@thefulcrum.us

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A campaign to end partisan gerrymandering by the Republicans who run Oklahoma is facing more legal challenges in its efforts to bring nonpartisan mapmaking to the Sooner State.

In October, a coalition of redistricting reformers filed a petition with the secretary of state seeking permission to get signatures on petitions proposing a November ballot measure to create an independent commission that would undertake the next round of legislative and congressional redistricting after this year's census.

The application was quickly challenged in court by those seeking to keep the power in the hands of Oklahoma's entrenched, Republian-controlled Legislature.

They won a partial victory last month when the state Supreme Court ordered People Not Politicians, which is pushing for the commission, to rewrite its proposed language for the ballot summarizing the legalese of the referendum. The court ruled the wording lacked sufficient detail.

The justices, however, rejected more serious claims that opponents presented in the hopes of thwarting the petition, such as the claim that it amounted to a First Amendment violation.

People Not Politicians, which is headed by the League of Women Voters of Oklahoma and Let's Fix This, refiled revised language just days later.

On Friday, however, their opponents filed new legal challenges, again attacking the accuracy of the proposed language for the ballot as well as new claims about the constitutionality of the measure, such as barring people with political ties from the proposed commission.

Andy Moore, executive director of People Not Politicians, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by the challenges brought by four plantiffs, who he said included a politician's wife, a lobbyist's daughter, a major GOP donor and a former head of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau. In other words, not your average citizens, but politically connected individuals with a stake in keeping certain politicians or political parties in control over mapmaking.

Moore said he is hoping the court moves quickly to allow the group time to begin collecting the 178,000 signatures needed to place the constitutional amendment on the ballot Nov. 3, in time for the potential commission to get to work on drawing the new lines to be used in 2022. The deadline for getting on the ballot is Aug. 19.

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

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Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

Getty Images, bizoo_n

Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

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An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

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How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

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