AOC calls for more Democrat-leaning states to redraw election maps after Supreme Court ruling and GOP push
Source: theindependentonline
AOC calls for more Democrat-leaning states to redraw election maps after Supreme Court ruling and GOP push
Source: theindependentonline
17 Comments
Please, please, please do this.
Republicans are fascist snakes. They hate democratic elections. They hate liberty and democracy.
This is a fight for survival, and Democrats need to take every advantage they can get.
What states are left to counter-gerrymander, though?
Minnesota
>Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist congresswoman, made the comments after the Supreme Court significantly weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
>“The Democratic caucus has tried to pass nonpartisan gerrymandering for ten years,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent. “Republicans have rejected it, and so we have to all abide by the same rules.”
>Section 2 specifically prohibits states and localities from using “any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.”
>On Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that Louisiana relied to heavily on race when it redrew its congressional map in 2024.
>That essentially opens the door to Republican-leaning states to redraw their congressional maps to expand the number of Republicans without fear of violating the Voting Rights Act.
>Already, Texas and North Carolina have redrawn their congressional maps at the request of President Donald Trump. Republicans hope that by redrawing their congressional maps in the middle of the decade, they can avoid losing the majority in the House of Representatives.
>“And so if Republicans are going to redraw North Carolina, if they’re going to redraw Texas, if they’re going to redraw and gerrymander every one of their states, then unfortunately, we have to provide balance to that until we get to the day where we can all finally agree to put this behind us and pass nonpartisan gerrymandering federally,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
>In addition to Texas and North Carolina, Republicans have attempted to redraw the congressional maps in states like Missouri, though a Trump-backed effort to do so in Indiana failed.
>But the efforts is not stopping. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis called a new session of the Republican-controlled legislature to redraw the congressional map and create four new Republican-leaning districts.
>In response, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he would challenge the effort.
>“While Democrats have given voters the choice whether or not to respond to Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering scheme at the ballot box, Republicans are drawing maps behind closed doors in the dead of night,” Jeffries said in a statement earlier this week. “The DeSantis Dummymander will not stand. See you in Court.”
>Historically, Democrats have supported nonpartisan redistricting. But Republican efforts have prompted them to support temporary gerrymandering in states that have nonpartisan redistricting boards.
The GOP needs to be decimated so badly at the midterms that the party itself dies and is lost to history.
Republicans: not even once.
Republicans literally rewrote the rules mid-decade Texas gerrymandered at Trump’s personal request, then the Supreme Court blessed it. Now that Democrats want to respond in kind, suddenly it’s a crisis? AOC isn’t calling for anything Republicans haven’t already been doing for months. You don’t unilaterally disarm when the other side already fired the first shot. The VRA is effectively dead now per Kagan’s own dissent. What exactly is the principled alternative here just accepting fewer minority representatives and a permanent Republican House majority?
Some Democrats tried taking the high road and rejecting gerrymandering, even when it cost them elections. That just ensured Republicans won more.
The only thing that will get Republicans to reconsider is gerrymandering so hard back that they realize they will sometimes come out on the losing end.
*Jeffries said in a statement earlier this week. “The DeSantis Dummymander will not stand. See you in Court.”*
Dummymander? The best you could do?
The Democrats have the lamest frikkin’ leaders.
I want democrates to bring back sanity to government. I want investigations into all the crimes this administration has been doing. I want punishment for those crimes.
Republicans are making it hard to to vote. So we’ll have to jump through all the flaming hoops to get our right to vote. I will be hopping.
Yup. THIS is the correct answer.
Sad state of business for democracy but one side doesn’t believe in democracy.
Democrats have been playing chess while Republicans play checkers for years, so maybe its time to actually start flipping the board too.
This is the shit that is going to break American politics and, hopefully, lead to meaningful vote reform when the endgame is just mutually assured destruction for everyone. The nation’s democracy can’t continue to exist in a state where elected officials choose their voters, where votes for Congress are meaningless to individuals because the map is rigged for one party, where a state with a 55/45 split sends only representatives of a single party to D.C. If this doesn’t change, then Congress itself is a dead branch of government imo, it’ll become the Roman Senate to the ~~emperor~~ president.
Can someone tell how the Virginia Dems in charge of this redistricting screwed up a 90 day waiting period before launching the voting for the plan. If they fucked this up procedurally and have to try and start again and run out of time then people are going to lose their minds. Trump is chuckling at how incompetent the Dems are. The asshole has a good point.
Waiting for the billionaire Democrats to manufacture reasons why they won’t redraw certain states. If AOC wants it then chances are the establishment Democratic Party has donors who don’t want it. I’m not holding my breath that they redraw meaningfully enough to win the midterms. The Supreme Court decision today reeks of moneyed interests making sure a GOP majority can remain in power for the second half of Trump’s consolidation of power and destruction of our democracy. If the Democratic Party actually shows teeth and redraws to devastate the GOP I’ll delightedly eat my words.
Republicans have been gerrymandering for decades with zero consequences, so maybe turnabout is fair play.
What an insanely stupid clusterfuck Trump and the Texas Republicans have kicked off. My only hope that this will trigger interest in some nation-wide redistricting reform.