60 years ago, a great thing happened: the U.S. House of 430 American Whites and 5 American Blacks, the U.S. Senate of 100 American Whites and no American people of color voted to legalize a principle, which an American white President signed into law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It guaranteed that no American citizen, regardless of their race, political affiliation, religious affiliation, no religious affiliation, and sexual orientation, could be denied their citizenship right to vote; it made real for the first time in America’s history of democracy the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the American Constitution. However, 60 years later, what Texas Republicans are doing, what California and New York Democrats are talking about doing, is a true dagger to the heart of American voting rights and the great thing that happened 60 years ago!!!
Having created its current congressional election districts in October of 2021, the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature has decided it will not wait the traditional 10 years, 2031, before redrawing its 2021 congressional election districts, they have released a plan to redraw them now, only 4 years later, solely at the request of one who all Texas Republicans proudly admit is Republican President Donald Trump. President Trump proudly admits that he is making the request, since a “very simple redrawing” of Texas congressional election districts will give House Republicans 5 additional seats in Congress.
Democrat Party state legislators in New York are responding by proposing a law that would allow New York to redraw congressional election districts before their traditional 10-year time frame elapses, which could increase the number of Democrats elected from New York and nullify the effect of any new Republicans elected from Texas. California Governor Gavin Newsom is responding by proposing a special election be held in November, which would allow Californians to vote on a map of newly redrawn congressional election districts that would increase the number of Democrats elected from California.
While the redistricting proposal from New York is 50% more voting-rights-proof than the Texas proposal because it seeks voter permission to create the new election districts, and California’s is 75% more voting rights-proof than the Texas redistricting plan, because its redistricting plan seeks voter approval of each newly drawn election district, all 3 either completely reverse or take steps backward from a one-person-one-vote-counted-democracy. Texas reverses from one-person-one-vote-counted-democracy to autocracy, New York takes 2 steps back from one-person-one-vote-counted-democracy, and California takes 1 step back.
The 1 step back by California is the most painful step of all to watch, even though it’s only 1 step backwards, because the current way California draws its congressional election districts, is as close to being 100% voting-rights-proof as possible, it’s the model that only 3 other states have implemented, and the model the remaining 46 states will never implement as long as self-dealing politicians, who are both Republican and Democrat, continue to control the process of drawing congressional election districts throughout America.
In California, Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona, congressional election districts are drawn by an independent commission, which is composed of members who cannot be current public officials or lawmakers, and the commission members are selected by an independent body composed of individuals who are not current public officials or lawmakers.
California’s 14-member commission of non-elected officials draws its congressional election districts based on only the following 6 rank-ordered criteria:
- Population Equality: Districts must comply with the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of “one person, one vote.”
- Federal Voting Rights Act: Districts must ensure an equal opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice
- Geographic Contiguity: All areas within a district must be connected to each other, except for the special case of islands
- Geographic Integrity: Districts shall minimize the division of cities, counties, local neighborhoods, and communities of interest to the extent possible, without violating previous criteria. A community of interest is a contiguous population that shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation.
- Geographic Compactness: To the extent practicable, and where this does not conflict with previous criteria, districts must not bypass nearby communities for more distant communities.
- Nesting: To the extent practicable, and where this does not conflict with previous criteria, each State Senate district will be composed of two whole State Assembly districts, and Board of Equalization districts will be composed of 10 Senate districts.
Independent studies by the Public Policy Institute of California, the National Journal, and Ballotpedia have all shown that California now has some of the most competitive voting rights-proof election districts in the nation.
Unfortunately, California’s single step back will inject cancer into its current voting-rights-proof, cancer-free election district drawing procedure; it’s a smaller dose of cancer than New York’s proposal will inject into its election district drawing procedure, but nonetheless, it’s still cancer injected into a cancer-free zone. The cancer is Democrat or Republican Party self-dealing politicians who design and draw election districts for the exclusive benefit of their political party. This political self-dealing is referred to as Gerrymandering, named in part for the self-dealing politician, Governor Elbridge Gerry, who signed an 1812 bill into law that created a strange-looking election district in Boston, Massachusetts, solely to benefit his political party.
Political party self-dealing cancer (gerrymandering) infects every state in America, except California, Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona, every 10 years when the other cancerous 46 states redesign and redraw their state’s congressional election districts using new population census data, the only difference between the 46 cancers is whether it’s a Republican or Democrat cancer, whether it’s Republican or Democrat self-dealing cancer is determined by if the state’s legislature is Republican or Democrat controlled.
However, California and New York injecting small doses of cancer into their election district creation procedures is a necessary evil; it’s the appropriate immediate response to Texas injecting autocracy into their already cancerous election district creation procedures. At least California and New York are taking steps to voting-rights-proof their response to Texas’s autocracy.
Unlike Texas, California will seek an approval or disapproval citizen vote on the new congressional districts redesigned and redrawn by self-dealing California Democrat Party politicians. Unlike Texas, New York will seek a yes or no citizen vote asking permission for self-dealing New York Democrat Party politicians to redesign and redraw congressional election districts. In Texas, Republican state legislators are simply deciding among themselves to redesign and redraw congressional districts with no request from or input from Texas citizens (autocracy), solely for the exclusive benefit of their Republican Party and their political leader, President Trump.
Both California and New York’s appropriate responses to Texas’s autocracy are designed to only become active if Texas is successful, in autocratically drawing the 5 new Republican election districts President Trump is requesting. But if Texas is successful the California and New York responses only remain simply a necessary evil response that equalizes America’s voting rights, if the cancer and autocracy ends in Texas, California, and New York, if it does not, both their responses, like Texas’s is, become a dagger to the heart of voting rights in America.
Unfortunately, signs are already emerging that it will not end with Texas autocracy and California/New York self-dealing cancer. Democrat U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin from Michigan, a state like California that has a cancer-free independent commission that designs and draws its congressional election districts, is now urging Democrats to “go nuclear” and match Republicans in redrawing congressional election districts. Missouri Senate Republican President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin says momentum is building in the Republican-controlled Missouri state legislature to call a special session, to draw 1 new Republican congressional election district, and Illinois Democrat Governor JB Pritzker said if Texas does redistrict, he might call a special session of the Illinois state legislature to redraw congressional election districts.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that American citizens are on their own when it comes to fighting unfair partisan elections
A competition between self-dealing Democrat politicians versus self-dealing Republican politicians, to see who can best suppress the votes of voters who don’t vote for their political party, is a lethal dagger to the heart of American voting rights, and transforms American democracy into American autocracy.
Increasing the chances of American democracy transforming into American autocracy, the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court issued a 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause: “Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust; the districting plans at issue here are highly partisan, by any measure. The question is whether the courts below appropriately exercised judicial power when they found them unconstitutional as well. There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral. Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.”
In other words, it’s now legal in America for cancerous self-dealing politicians to create federal, state, county, or city election districts that rig election vote results in favor of their political party. In other words, since there is no judicial remedy to stop them from suppressing the votes of their opposition, no politician, red, yellow, brown, black, white, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, can or should ever be trusted to draw fair and unbiased election districts.
The bottom line is that what Texas, California, and New York are doing is opening the door to America returning to the pre-Civil Rights Movement days of Jim Crow voting rights. The only difference in 2025 would be suppressing a citizen’s vote based on political affiliation and not on race. Too many American red, yellow, brown, black, white, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and atheist bled and died to profusely to make the 1965 Voting Rights Act a reality so that Jim Crow voting rights, based on anything, would be eradicated from the American landscape.
The only way to honor their sacrifice, the only way to make the American Constitution’s foundation principle of one-person-one-vote-counted-democracy a permanent and true American reality, is for the 46 cancerous states that have not followed the cancer-free voting-rights-proof example set by California, Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona by eliminating all politicians of all stripes from the creation of election districts, must now do so with all deliberate speed!!!