In June, Texas Republicans announced a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts. The goal was clear: flip as many as five Democratic-held seats in the House of Representatives to the GOP. That revision, which was enacted in August, is already transforming American politics — and decidedly for the worse.
Red and blue states are engaged in a redistricting arms race that risks creating, in effect, one-party red and blue states and further sharpening the country's partisan divides.
The latest state to jump on the redistricting bandwagon is Virginia, where state Democratic leaders are considering a plan to amend the state's constitution to allow for redistricting that could potentially flip two to three House seats from red to blue.This move comes on the heels of Missouri Republicans revising their congressional map to target the district held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. In North Carolina, already one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country, state Republicans passed legislation redrawing the state's congressional map to potentially flip one House seat from blue to red. California voters appear poised to pass a referendum that would amend the state constitution to allow mid-decade redistricting. The move, made in direct response to Texas' redistricting, could flip as many as five or six Republican-held seats to Democrats.
The irony of all these partisan machinations is that if Democrats are successful in California and Virginia, it would likely cancel out the GOP's redistricting efforts, or ensure that Republican efforts yield only a handful of potential flips.
But Texas' gambit is already opening the floodgates to even greater partisan redistricting.
This is a preview of Michael A. Cohen's latest column. Read the full column here.
