[ad_1]
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week balleted threats to Texas legislators who are trying to turn vote maps into gerrymans in support of Republicans.
“Whatever they’re doing will be castrated here in California and they’ll pay the price,” Newsom said. “They caused this reaction. And we’re not going to roll, we’re going to fight the fire with fire.”
“We” in that sentence are you, California voters, and you may be asked to quickly fix the Texas threat through the ballot box. If Newsom has his way, voters in November will face some versions of IF/later.
In these days of creeping authoritarianism, it is not only a fair question, but also a risk large enough to remake American democracy and accidentally crush it.
But that’s our union state, and even those who have decided to keep it, are ready to abandon its basic tenets (including myself), and by considering remake the voting map, it causes the national kerfuffle.
“This is something we’ve never seen before, right?” Mindy Romero told me Tuesday. She is an assistant professor and founder of the Centre for Inclusive Democracy at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.
Romero is against gerrymandering, but I agree that we are in “unprecedented times.”
Most of you know that after pressure from President Trump, the Texas Legislature is considering redrawing the voting map in the hopes of scooping up more seats for Republicans in the middle of 2026.
With this Texas two-stage potentially able to hand over a more firmly compliant Congress to Trump, Newsom came up with a plan to gerrymandate our own map. But to make it (hopefully) legal, he needs to vote for it. We bend them.
Who did you find the change in districts so exciting? But stay calm and re-zone the nerd. It remains boring for the majority of voters.
The difference between Texas and California is the voting initiative process, and ultimately leads the gerrymandal here. In Texas, it’s a backroom.
But will voters go for it? For many, it would come down to simple choices that miss the complexities of California vs. Texas, Newsom vs. Trump, democracy vs. authoritarianism.
Romero warns that when you crush the standard, even for positive reasons, it’s difficult to get it back. She worries that gerrymandering may remain despite Newsom’s claim that the 2030-equipped map will disappear.
California currently has one of the best systems in the country for its nonpartisan constituencies with independent committees that draw a line regardless of party.
It was introduced as decades of gerrymandering disillusioned voters.
In the 1980s, political icon Philip Burton is said to have competed for the infamous Jerrymander. He did it to protect his brother John Burton (a colorful companion who served in both the state and the legislature before becoming chairman of the California Democratic Party).
“Yeah, that’s gorgeous,” Philip Burton explained that suspicious territory to the Washington Post at the time. “It comes and goes like a snake.”
That was how business was done before the introduction of the Rezoning Committee in 2008, and it was a massive push by the GOV of the time. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a critic of Gerrymandering’s voice and vowed to fight Newsom’s plans.
But that nonpartisan system won fiercely, and in reality, neither party really loved the idea.
“We went through this,” Romero pointed out. “Democrats and Republicans in California didn’t want to have an independent constituency. Let’s make that clear. But a lot of people came together and worked towards this.”
So, while future voting measures may focus on justice in fighting fires, it is also true that Democrats and some Democrat politicians hope to gain personal benefits from such votes.
This may be about saving democracy, but politics is always about personal and party interests. Some California lawmakers are confident they want to win a newly drawn seat in the legislature. And of course, there is Newsom’s political ambition.
“It’s really hard to unleash people who might seriously scare our democracy,” said Romero. “You might jump on this and see it as a political opportunity, and I think we have to be really honest about it,” Romero said.
It is a choice voters are asked to make in the end.
But we cannot ignore the unstable nature of the times and the reality that our checks and balances are disrupted. Do we save the integrity of elections, put democracy at risk, or will we try to save democracy and put the integrity of elections at risk?
Two paths lead to darkness. Do voters follow newspapers and Trump?
[ad_2]Source link
