The Gerrymandered Olympics

Some people enjoy politics the way others enjoy sports. Here’s what could happen if we let one intrude on the other!

In summer I don’t watch much TV, except those amazing days every four years when the Olympics captivate me and so many other people. The only races happening now are for political office. Important, but less riveting.

Because gerrymandering has been so much on my mind, I’m thinking about how the Olympics would look if they were gerrymandered. Neither politics nor the Games are strangers to cheating, so I can see a similarity. Gerrymandering is defined as the drawing of political voting districts in such a way as to advantage one party over the other. Here in Wisconsin, the Democrats had a pretty good hold on the state legislature through the careful manipulation of partisan data to draw the maps (gerrymandering)—until 2010. Then the national GOP invested in key state races across the United States, changing the legislative balance enough in Wisconsin to allow the Republicans to re-draw the maps using a sophisticated computer program that used partisan data to give them an almost unbeatable advantage in holding the majority of seats in the state Assembly and Senate (gerrymandering on steroids).

Which brings me back to the Olympics. In this thought experiment on gerrymandering them, we’d first pick two sports to represent our two main parties. The other sports, however interesting, they are, have to go. Just as minor political parties, no matter how intriguing their ideas may be, are mostly ignored.

Let’s choose sprint races and weightlifting as our sports in the gerrymandered Olympics. Speed and strength, the basic components of sport. Working together, speed and strength can do amazing things. But—the sprinters are loathe to cooperate with the weightlifters. The sprinters want to control the outcome of the Games. To do this, they need to make every competition all about speed and they must write their own rules. Through skillful use of money and questionable ethics, the sprinters wrest control of the Olympics for themselves.

Once in the catbird seat, they add running requirements to the weightlifting competitions and vastly reduce the weights. Disgruntled weightlifters seek justice, but the sprinters chose the committee members to whom the weightlifters complain. Their arguments fall on deaf ears.

So now Olympic medals are won only by the swift. Only one characteristic is emphasized for every athlete: speed. Every problem has just one solution—run faster. Do you see how this cannot be good for the future of sports and the Olympics? What about Wisconsin? If power is held without challenge, if district representatives are guaranteed re-election, and if the members of one party need never debate or reach a compromise with the other party, then where is the opportunity for creative and unifying solutions?

Speed and strength combined with the coordination of a motivated athlete can lift us, astonished, from our seats for a moment. Politicians working together with the greater good in mind can lift people from poverty for a lifetime. Can create opportunities for businesses that revive our small towns. Can change mediocre schools into good ones, where students can be inspired and engaged with ideas that will better the world.

Seventy-two percent of Wisconsin residents oppose gerrymandering. You can be part of saving our state. Support only candidates this November who have signed pledges to end gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Imagine the end of the legislative session being as joyous and celebratory, filled with memories of breathtaking feats and heartwarming examples of sportsmanship, as the closing ceremonies of the Games.

Our state motto is “Forward.” The Olympic motto is “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” We can take the spirit of the Olympics and move Wisconsin forward faster, aiming higher, and making our democracy stronger by putting an end to gerrymandering. Otherwise, same old, same old, let the (rigged) games begin.

By Maureen Ash for Western WI for Nonpartisan Voting Districts

If you’d like to make sure that gerrymandering ends in WI, join Western WI for Nonpartisan Voting Districts by contacting us here.