Gary Franks, syndicated columnist

President Donald Trump launched an effort to redraw congressional districts to favor Republican candidates for Congress. A number of states complied with Trump’s wishes. But also a number of states, led by Democrats, have done the same to favor their side. Virginia is the most recent to do so.

Trump is not totally wrong in his summation, but the remedy is bad as redistricting changes are supposed to occur once every 10 years based on population changes.

So, today we have folks who know that their opponents’ actions are bad and that they are wrong, but their way of fighting it is to do the same thing. They must figure that doing their redistricting will lessen the impact of the other guys’ “wrongs” – warped logic to say the least.

I know a little about gerrymandering congressional districts. I was briefly thrown out of the Congressional Black Caucus due to my objection to racially gerrymandering districts. As a congressman I wrote a bill and testified before the U.S. Appeals Court in Savannah, Georgia, on the matter. I did not believe that it was necessary to elect a Black candidate and I was proof as I was elected in a 4% Black congressional district in Connecticut. Fast forward to today, most of the new members of the U.S. House of Representatives, of color, also come from majority white districts. So, I guess I was correct 30+ years ago.

The trend now is to have partisan gerrymandered congressional districts. It is like the pot calling the kettle black. Essentially, they are the same thing, though the Supreme Court has not ruled that way, yet. One thing for certain is that gerrymandering – whether racial or partisan – is wrong. It is not fair to the voters, but unfortunately it can work.

Right after my election in 1990 I got a call from a top official at the Republican National Committee. He asked me to support the racial gerrymandering of congressional districts. He said the RNC would like to give the Democrats exactly what they wanted – racially gerrymandered districts – because in doing so it would create more Republican congressional districts. And we (the Republicans) would take over Congress as a result. I said I could not. I stated that it was wrong and unnecessary.

And a few brief years later the prediction made by the top RNC official came to fruition – the GOP took over both branches of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Just a few years later, a GOP congressional leader decided to take racial gerrymandering to another level – political/partisan gerrymandering, which is legal as the Supreme Court looks the other way. It involves technically jamming as many Democrats or Republicans as possible into a district, thus creating more opportunities for the opposite party.

Why is racial gerrymandering illegal and political gerrymandering legal as they more often than not lead to the same results? The problem is upwards of 90% of Black people are Democrats or Independents. So, you get the same results. That is sad. But bad people can always find the proverbial “loophole” in the law.

Regardless of the efforts of party leaders, the voters will ultimately decide.

However, manipulating elections or even giving the appearance of fixing an election is what an anti-Democracy person would do. They do not want the will of the people to prevail. An anti-Democracy person would want to make it all one big farce. And when people lose faith in our electoral process then the anti-Democracy folks win.

One could ask facetiously, how could anyone complain when the people voted for the change in California and Virginia? They voted to create a large number of Democratic congressional districts via their registered voting rolls, thus reducing the number of Republican congressional districts. It has to be noted, however, that Virginia’s state constitutional amendment voted on asked the people to be for “fairness.” And who would be against “fairness”? Despite the misleading context and language, 46% of Virginians voted against the amendment. It passed, however.

Once again, Trump is not totally wrong on the issue of Republican representation in Congress.

You cannot just pick on the states that are doing last-minute redraws of their congressional lines. In New England there has not been a Republican congressman in decades.

At one time Connecticut had four districts out of six that could have been won by a Democrat or Republican. And in the 1990s that had happened. Today there are no Republicans. It has been that way since 2008 thanks to “partisan” redistricting. Largely due to this practice, there has not been a Republican Senator elected since 1982 or a governor elected since 2006 (usually a congressional seat would best prepare one for a Senate or governor’s position).

The Democratic-controlled state legislature’s redistricting plan split one of Connecticut’s largest cities – Waterbury – taking the most Republican part and placing it into a district with New Haven. They took towns I once won with 75%+ of the vote out of the 5th District as well. Then, they added the most Democratic city in the former 6th District, New Britain, to the 5th District.

It was cleverly done and has harmed the state as they have no person from the Republican Party representing them in Washington. You would be hard pressed to find another extended period when this has happened in Connecticut’s history. The state was long considered to be a “moderate” one. The rest of New England is no better off as constituents in that region too have no Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As we create monolithic states all singing from the same choir book, the voters in those states lose. The people hear only one message out of Washington – the Democratic message and spin on all issues. Democratic politicians rarely have any serious challengers. They have the freedom to be extremist, demonstrating little concern or regard for Republican voters and sentiments because they only fear a primary election.

Maybe, just maybe, we can come up with a way to have congressional districts drawn up where politicians do not determine their voters. After all, Democrats and Republicans would always want more folks from their respective parties determining their fate. Too much of that practice contributes to a polarized America.

When you can only win when you put your fingers on the scale, the result is a true failure for democracy. Two wrongs will never make a right. Conversely, these wrongs may very well cause some Americans to lose faith in our political system altogether.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Gary Franks served three terms as a congressman from Connecticut’s 5th District. He was the first Black conservative elected to Congress and first Black Republican elected to the House in nearly 60 years. Host: Podcast “We Speak Frankly” www.garyfranksphilanthropy.org.