Shame on Texas and California, where the Republicans and Democrats have engaged recently in political poker-playing that is doing a disservice and perhaps harm to America’s representative democracy.
It started a few weeks ago when the Texas Legislature began to act on a request by President Trump to redraw lines of congressional districts in such a way as to increase the number of Republicans Texas sends to Congress.
Republicans currently hold a 219-212 edge in the House of Representatives, but could lose their majority in the mid-term elections next year. In the mid-terms in 2018, during Trump’s first term, Democrats picked up 40 seats and took control of the House.
If the Democrats pick up anywhere near that many this time around, they will again have control of the House and will be able to block Trump’s agenda. Thus, the urgency to gerrymander the districts in Texas.
Once it appeared Texas was going to redraw its map, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential candidate for president on the Democrats’ ticket in 2028, called Texas’s bet and anted up five new Democrat Congressmen of his own.
California is as strong a Democrat bastion asTexas is Republican and would be able to gerrymander five Republican districts out of existence in favor of five that will most likely elect Democrats.
Other state legislatures on both sides are poised to redraw their districts for the sole purpose of either keeping or gaining control of the House.
And that’s the problem. Representative democracy is about giving everyone an equal voice in government. Every House district in the country is of roughly the same size - about 750,000 people each - and their voters elect people to represent their interests in the Congress.
It’s not like the Senate, where every state gets two, or the Presidency, where there’s only one for everybody.
The House of Representatives is for the people, not for the benefit of national political parties.
It doesn’t matter which party or which state benefits, gerrymandering for political expediency is always a bad idea