NH lawmakers tried to end gerrymandering. Sununu scuttled their attempt

Politicians willingly gave up the power to draw their own districts and choose their own voters, a fundamental conflict of interest at odds with fair elections. Instead, an independent commission of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents would determine the lines. Maps would need the approval of nine commissioners and all three groups to pass. The entire process would be transparent.

This brave bipartisan disarmament, however, which unanimously sailed through the election law committees in both chambers, met a partisan and unprincipled end when New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, vetoed the bill earlier this month. The governor’s action all but guarantees another decade of unrepresentative, rigged maps.

New Hampshire desperately needs reform. While Sununu’s veto message argued that gerrymandering was “extremely rare” in New Hampshire, the state was among those targeted by national Republicans in the 2010 election, ahead of last decade’s redistricting, as part of the party’s REDMAP effort. The Republican State Leadership Committee poured tens of thousands of dollars into down-ballot legislative races, helping the GOP win back both chambers of the state Legislature as well as unilateral control over maps created in 2011.

As the governor certainly knows, Republicans maximized that power. A study by New Hampshire Public Radio found that the state Senate maps handed Republicans 10 to 15 percent more seats than the GOP would have won on neutral maps. Republicans also gerrymandered New Hampshire’s powerful executive council, which controls most state spending.

When Democratic state Senate candidates won more votes statewide in 2012, Republicans held the chamber nevertheless. It required the monumental 2018 wave to overcome the maps and give Democrats modest legislative majorities.

Sununu could have joined politicians of both sides and laid down his weapons. Instead, he likely made a crafty partisan calculation: If he can fill a state Supreme Court vacancy, or Republicans win back just one seat on the executive council, Republicans would have a 3-2 edge in either powerful body. If Democrats hold the Legislature, Sununu can veto their maps and force them into court. Or, if a polarizing presidential race makes 2020 a more competitive election year than 2018, the decade-long GOP edge baked into these maps could hand back the Legislature to the GOP.

This is bad for voters and troublesome for democracy. New Hampshire reformers tried to fix the problem, before partisanship as usual interfered. When the US Supreme Court refused to address partisan gerrymandering in June, Chief Justice John Roberts urged reformers to continue their efforts at home, noting that “numerous other states are restricting partisan considerations in districting through legislation” and “actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts.” Sununu’s veto is just another reason why the Supreme Court needed to act: Too many powerful partisans are unwilling to surrender even an ill-gotten gain.

With the federal courts now off limits, any legislative reform is naturally going to include partisans. Voters will have to judge their integrity and interest in fair maps rather than securing an advantage for their own side.

Sununu reinjected partisanship into an issue that polls show Americans understand as basic fairness. Voters keep demanding fair maps. Fair-minded politicians in New Hampshire tried to deliver them. It’s part of a national strategy to make democracy itself a partisan football. As long as the Republican Party has this democracy problem, we will all have a democracy problem. It will make crucial reform harder.

The next decennial redistricting is two years and just one electoral cycle away. The shape of our politics for the next 10 years will be determined by who draws the lines. Now that the federal courts have declared they will not protect the integrity of these maps, it will take politicians from both parties to recognize the dangers of growing anti-majoritarian rule, and the importance of competing for mandates at the ballot box rather than locking themselves in power, safely insulated from the people. Sununu hardly creates confidence that his side understands the dangers they’re unleashing.

David Daley is the author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and the forthcoming “Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back To Save Democracy.”