Both Sides Want to ‘Rig’ Elections

In theory, democracy means rule by the people. In practice, the people never rule. Elites do, not least by openly manipulating processes. This increases tension, and the legitimacy of the system collapses as elites rail against each other. For those utterly excluded from political influence, such as white advocates today, this is an opportunity.

Both Republicans and Democrats are trying to redistrict their states so their respective parties can take over the House of Representatives. The conflict is most advanced in Texas. Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, asked the state supreme court to remove Democratic leader Gene Wu from his post as a state representative because Mr. Wu and other Democrats fled the state to prevent the GOP from having a quorum and pushing through a new district map. Mr. Wu says this is racist: “When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.”

Black Democrat Jolanda Jones went further in an interview with Don Lemon:

We better have the courage to stand up . . . . I mean, we will lose all of our rights. And if you think it can’t happen, it can. And I will liken this to the Holocaust. People are like, ‘Well, how did the Holocaust happen. How was somebody in a position to kill all them [sic] people?’ Well, good people remain silent, or good people didn’t realize what happens to them can very soon happen to me or somebody I love.

She has since semi-apologized. “Trump is coming for my community, and I get emotional about it and make strong statements,” she said. “But that was going too far, and I retract that comparison.”

Texas Democrats grandstanded in friendly states. Some hosted a news conference in Massachusetts. Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who may run for president, said that a press conference near Chicago was canceled because of a false bomb threat. Republicans in the Texas House passed a resolution calling for absent Democrats to be arrested, but that would be legal only within the state. Governor Abbott suggested the FBI could find them. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), a notable moderate, has also called for FBI help.

President Trump has already endorsed redrawing the maps. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called it a fight against “illegal race-based gerrymandering.” The Department of Justice informed Texas that current maps use “racial motivations” and that there may also be ineligible voters on the rolls. The DOJ wants to scrap so-called “minority-majority” districts, deliberately distorted to include enough non-whites to make them the majority.

The Supreme Court will soon hear cases that challenge the legality of those districts. Under the current interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, districts must be drawn to make sure that certain minority groups, including Indian tribes and blacks, can choose their representatives. What this means is that there is a recognized collective right to community representation for everyone except whites. Liberals have unleashed a spate of articles warning that if racial gerrymandering ends, the Voting Rights Act will be meaningless just after its 60th anniversary. The GOP is trying to prevent private groups from suing to enforce VRA provisions, thus disarming left-wing groups that use lawsuits to get the maps they want.

The fight in Texas may be settled by this weekend, but nationwide, the battle is just starting. Democrats who think that the way to defeat Donald Trump is brazen combat are determined to fight fire with fire. Among them is California Governor Gavin Newsom, who wants to draw five new Democratic districts to replace Republican-leaning ones. The state’s voters would presumably approve such a change to stop Trump.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is also exploring a change to districts to give Democrats more representation, but this would require a measure in two consecutive state-house sessions and winning a ballot initiative. Therefore, this will not happen before the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans may be able to squeeze out a few existing seats in a few other states. Florida may have one open seat. Indiana may have one, and JD Vance may be planning a visit. Ohio may have three Democrat seats that the GOP could take. Democrats have potential gains in Illinois and Maryland.

An upcoming Supreme Court case will challenge the constitutionality of a second majority-minority congressional district in Louisiana, which of course is held by Democrats. If the Court decides that such districts violate the Constitution, then the Republicans could conceivably win that seat. It would also have profound implications when it comes to drawing districts nationwide, which could begin or end many political careers. For example, Nancy Mace (R-SC) is an attention-seeking representative who is about to run for governor of South Carolina. The reason she is even in office is because the Supreme Court overturned a lower court order that found legislators had discriminated against blacks when drawing up her district.

Liberals are also trying to redraw boundaries in Wisconsin and Utah, which could get Democrats more seats. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey held a press conference, blasting the Republicans and saying that they had given the Democrats no choice but to respond in kind:

Isn’t it a sad state of affairs that that’s where we’re at? Okay? And you know, Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, have left us no choice. That’s the reality.

Nobody came looking for this, right? We had a system of free and fair elections. We have maps that are regularly drawn, voted on by legislatures, approved and signed off on by governors. This is the way the system works, until this, until this comes in.

And so, you know, they’ve left us no choice.

Massachusetts already has no Republican representatives, so there is actually nothing more she can do.

The various battles in the states may cancel each other out, but what President Trump announced Thursday morning may be more significant. He has ordered a new census that excludes illegals. This would dramatically reduce Democratic representation in the House because much of their urban base won’t count anymore.

Combined with redistricting in the various states, this might let Republicans hold onto the House despite the now expected defeat in the midterms.

Rigging districts so that your own candidates win, or gerrymandering, is as old as the republic. The word comes from Elbridge Gerry. One of the Founding Fathers and an initial opponent of the party system, he nonetheless approved a Massachusetts district designed to benefit his party, the Democratic Republicans. This practice seems essential to the way we practice democracy.

Democrats blasted President Trump for saying that Republicans are “entitled” to five more congressional seats, but setting aside districts for minorities suggests that almost everyone thinks he has a right to certain seats. If Democrats retake power, we can expect they will make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states so they can count on more seats in the Senate, and perhaps even a permanent majority. James Carville says adding states and packing the Supreme Court are necessary to “save democracy.”

Anyone who truly believes that his policies are best will overlook rules that get in the way of doing the “right” thing. Gerrymandering was common even when America was racially homogenous and culturally united. Now that the country is a racially divided, post-national state, certain districts are understood to belong to certain ethnic groups. The parties themselves are stand-ins for race, so battles will be waged that much more cynically.

The question is: As all politics in America become identity politics, who rules? For those who believe in America as a united country, this is a troubling trend that heralds a possible breakup. For those who want whites to rule themselves and see Balkanization as a necessary step, it is another milestone in the collapse of the tragedy of multiracialism. The American Right is finally learning to fight, and that determination may break the system. That may just be what we need.

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