How redistricting and restricting mail ballots hurts Republicans too | Opinion

Once in power, party members often develop an affliction called “myopic fog.”

The condition presents as a compulsion to rewrite institutional rules. Common symptoms include electoral law manipulation, fixation on short-term advantage, and habitual overreaching.

Consider election administration.

For years, Republican controlled legislatures — including Kansas — have pursued stricter voting requirements, framing them as election integrity measures to combat fraud and bolster confidence in elections.

These efforts also reflected an electoral calculation, based on the belief that stricter requirements would depress turnout among lower income and less educated voters, groups that historically favored Democrats.

But something unforeseen happened; party coalitions began to change. Republicans drew a larger share of lower income and less educated voters, while Democrats increasingly attracted higher income, college-educated voters.

The irony is hard to miss. Measures advanced in the name of ballot integrity disadvantage Republican voters, too.

Kansas Republicans are poised to repeat the same miscalculation.

During the last legislative cycle, lawmakers sought to bar local governments from conducting elections exclusively by mail, citing postal delays, voter identification concerns, and increased administrative costs.

Yet a recent study found that Kansas all-mail municipal elections boosted turnout among rural voters compared to in-person voting, while also eliminating the turnout advantage typically enjoyed by urban voters. Thus, efforts to ban local mail elections undercut Republicans’ own rural base.

In addition, Republicans ended the three-day grace period for counting mail ballots, requiring receipt by 7 p.m. on Election Day. The change is not neutral. The grace period was originally enacted back in 2017 precisely because ballots from rural areas were arriving late despite being mailed on time.

Ending the grace period falls hardest on Republican supporters, particularly rural voters, seniors, and military families who are more dependent on mail voting and more vulnerable to postal delays.

Redistricting is another example.

After the 2020 census, Republicans redrew the Kansas 3rd Congressional District with the intent of ousting Democrat Sharice Davids.

Instead, the new map energized suburban Democrats and independents who saw it as unfair and an abuse of power. It also handed Davids a ready-made cause, burnishing her image as a fighter ready to take on the backroom politics in Topeka.

Despite her district becoming more rural and Republican, Davids won reelection in 2022 and again in 2024.

The point is not that election laws should never change, that voting restrictions are bad, that redistricting is wrong, or that Republicans are uniquely culpable.

It’s not about party, but about power and the myopia it produces.

Parties in power convince themselves their dominance will be preserved by tinkering with the rules, only to discover, often too late, that they have helped dismantle the very conditions that had benefited them.

Unfortunately, myopic fog cannot be cured, and events often make it worse.

The national redistricting wars have done just that, revealing how one side’s push for advantage provokes an equally aggressive response. What follows is escalation, driven on both sides by the same dangerous shortsightedness.

With no remedy, the best safeguard is a public willing, even amid partisan polarization, to place system stability above party.

A tall order. But a necessary one.

— Mark R. Joslyn is a professor of political science at the University of Kansas.