Gerrymandering: Will Making It Worse Actually Make Anything Better?

Gerrymandering is continuing to have it’s day in the national press.

Which is kinda good?

I mean, Texas’ latest venture into gerrymandering is bad, but the fact that the press is actually paying attention is good.

Though the fact that the press is treating it as just another back-and-forth in the ongoing game of tug-of-war between the Democrats and Republicans, rather than as an attempt to stabilize Congressional power for the coup that’s wrecking the country, is bad.

Treating it as just a game between two parties also ignores the fact that pretty much everyone outside the parties really hates this nonsense and would prefer to have gerrymandering actually get solved; it limits the discussion to a tactical one involving just Democrats and Republicans.

Whereas a real discussion would have to consider proportional representation and discuss how only a fundamental change in the electoral system can solve the gerrymandering problem.

But you face a coup with the national press you have, not the national press you want to have.

So let’s look at the options that are actually being discussed.

Firstly, it’s pretty clear that the Texas Republicans are going to pursue their new mid-decade gerrymander and that they have the votes in the Texas legislature to pass it if it comes up for a vote. So the Texas Democrats really don’t have any other procedural options for stopping it other than fleeing the state to deny the legislature quorum.

And that’s fine; their system requires quorum, so denying it is a legitimate procedural tactic.

It’ll be hard, since they can’t trust a Republican promise not to raise the issue again if the Democrats return; they’ll have to stay out of the state indefinitely, since the Governor has made it clear that he’ll take this as far as it needs to go to get his way.

But what about other states’ responses?

The governor of California has said he’ll attempt to further gerrymander our state if Texas goes through with it, which will be difficult for a few reasons.

First, California is already ludicrously gerrymandered, with Democrats holding 43 congressional seats to the Republicans’ 9; there’s not a lot of room to increase the Democratic delegation, but a creative and shameless gerrymander can probably eliminate at least 5 of those Republican seats and maybe even eliminate all 9.

Secondly, California has a Constitutional provision preventing it. Our congressional districts are laid out by a commission (because California politicians love unelected commissions) these days, not the legislature. This means that any new gerrymandering will have to be done by referendum.

So it comes down to: should we vote to give the Democrats even more power in California to block the Republicans grabbing more power in Texas?

This should be a no-brainer.

If the Democrats could be trusted to actually use that additional power to its fullest extent to prevent the disassembling of this country and the sale of its remaining parts to the richest bidder then sure, give them the power they need to do that.

But they had that chance when Biden was president and they did pretty much nothing useful with it at all. They whiffed it completely.

Newson himself had a chance to stop the federalizing of the California National Guard for Trump’s fascist display in Los Angeles and he did nothing useful about that either.

The Democrats have not proven that they can be an effective opposition.

At all.

So, no, we should probably not give the power to set congressional districts to the legislature or the governor; not even in this situation.

Though Newsom has been talking about writing the referendum in such a way that it’s a one-time thing, in which case maybe?

But not without a clear and detailed explanation of what they’ll actually do with that power.

They need to say, convincingly, in advance exactly what they plan to do.

As I said a few days ago:

So, when you next get a chance to vote consider: do you think the Democrats will actually fix the country’s underlying problems? Will they reform the electoral processes to prevent an insane minority from taking power again by gerrymandering and voter suppression? Will they remove the judges that enabled Trump’s illegal rampage through the federal government? Will they prosecute anyone?

If the Democrats could be trusted to completely bog Congress down in a never-ending stream of impeachment proceedings for Trump, the Supreme Court and all of Trump’s various crony-appointments (for example), then it would be worth giving them the power necessary to do that.

But without some real commitment from the Democrats to actually be an opposition, we really shouldn’t be giving them any more power.