Governor called referendum after president urged GOP-led states to redraw maps to protect House majority
Voters in Virginia on Tuesday approved new congressional maps intended to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives, in the latest blow to Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve his control of Congress.
The tit-for-tat redistricting battle began last year after Trump pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections.
California voters retaliated by approving new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected Democratic governor, backed an effort to redraw her state’s maps following her January inauguration. Tuesday’s referendum could help Democrats win four additional House seats in November’s midterm elections.
This is a race to the bottom… Rather than trying to address the problem with legislation we’re now just cheering one side corrupting democracy over another.
This won’t end well.
The Democrats introduced as their HR 1 a bill that would outlaw gerrymandering nationwide the last two cogresses where they picked the Speaker. They’ll almost certainly do so in January next year and two years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act
All Republicans have to do to end the gerrymandering in VA and CA and who knows where next year is get on board. They could even get a national voter ID rule if they really wanted.
Sadly, like Trump, the whole GOP is really bad at the jobs our tax dollars pay them for.
I have always supported a national voter id on the condition it’s paid for and people are automatically enrolled.
Republicans would never go for it.
Dems should actually run on this and then ask Republicans why they no longer support voter id
This is the correct approach. That bill is full of stuff that “everyone believes in” and should be what the Democrats hammer on every single day.
We’ve watched Dems ineffectually flail for 10 years. This is them actually getting something done for a change.
I don’t know about this effort but I believe the California bill has specific clauses to tie the California redistricting to unfair gerrymandering elsewhere.
Explicit, limited, linked retaliation, not just blind “we gotta win any way any how” is exactly how to win practically without compromising on principles.
California’s referendum-induced change returns to non-partisan redistricting in 2030. That is, it’s only set up to last for as long as Texas’s early gerrymander was.
It was presented as a counter, and Newsom said that he wouldn’t do it unless Texas went ahead with it, but technically isn’t attached to Texas’s early gerrymander. This became something of an issue when it became possible that Texas’s attempt might be overturned by courts, leaving the California counter-gerrymander intact.
Nothing has been ending well…
I’ll take some this type of response over the usual anyday.