Some States Are More Antidemocracy Than Others. Guess Where They Are?

At every level of government, Southern GOP pols are routinely stripping Black leaders and people of power and agency. Simply put, the South is not a democracy.

On Tuesday, federal judges blocked an attempt by Alabama Republicans to eliminate a heavily Black congressional district, and GOP politicians in South Carolina opted not to eliminate longtime Representative James Clyburn’s district. But those decisions don’t diminish what’s happened over the last few weeks: In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling, Southern Republicans have moved swiftly to remove as many Black lawmakers from Congress as possible. That callous approach might feel unprecedented and even shocking to people outside of the South. But for those of us who live in this region, this is normal—and far from the worst thing GOP politicians are doing. 

Forcing Black politicians out of office is in many ways just another step in the re-transformation of the South (and more broadly, red-state America) into an undemocratic region. Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Southern Republican politicians have gradually but aggressively eroded political power and rights for African Americans, Democrats, and liberals in their states. Freedom House earlier this year downgraded the United States from a full “liberal democracy” to an “electoral democracy,” arguing that checks and balances on the executive and other core characteristics of liberal democracy have diminished here. Whether the United States overall is a liberal democracy or can become one again, the states in the South are at best electoral democracies and are veering toward electoral autocracies. 

And with the Voting Rights Act shuttered, this antidemocratic drift will only accelerate. 

The drift has a long history. The South has been the country’s most antidemocratic region for most of U.S. history. Only a few decades after slavery ended, the region had installed Jim Crow laws. Until the 1960s, anti-Black Democrats controlled most states in the South and often prevented African Americans from voting or holding political power. But the region’s politics improved from the 1970s to the early 2000s. As the Democratic Party became more liberal and tied to African Americans, Southern Democratic governors such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton tried to advance policies that would make their states more just and equal. And even Republican governors like Jeb and George W. Bush........

© New Republic