The enduring, fair and legal method for a political party to increase its power is to develop policies that resonate with voters. But that does not prevent power brokers from attempting to game the system.
In Texas, at the urging of President Donald Trump, Republican legislators and Gov. Greg Abbott are considering a redraw of the state’s congressional districts before next year’s midterm elections. As the Texas Tribune reports: “The Department of Justice offered Texas a legal justification to pursue this long-shot strategy, warning the state in a letter Monday that four majority-minority congressional districts in the Houston and Fort Worth areas are unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. Soon after, Abbott set a special session agenda calling for mid-cycle redistricting ‘in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.’ ”
The idea in the Republican-controlled state is to increase the party’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The presumed strategy involves the time-honored tradition of gerrymandering — the drawing of districts to allow politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around.
As The Washington Post writes editorially: “Splicing and dicing the electorate in this way after every election reduces the number of truly competitive seats, which leads lawmakers to worry more about primary challengers than the general election. This, in turn, makes the so-called people’s house less representative of the people and heightens the toxic partisanship that is tugging apart the national fabric.”
In most states, the legislature draws new election maps every 10 years, following the results of the U.S. Census. Washington long ago adopted a superior system, establishing a bipartisan commission to draw maps for congressional and legislative districts; the system is imperfect, but it avoids the naked partisanship that infects much of the country.
That brings up questions about whether our Democratic-controlled state could engage in tit-for-tat shenanigans to counter Republican moves elsewhere. U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told CNN, “We are absolutely going to respond” to the Texas ploy. But she demurred when asked whether that would include trying to redraw maps in blue states such as Washington and California.
In reality, such gamesmanship is impossible in Washington, where Democrats hold eight of the 10 congressional seats. Convening the Redistricting Commission before the next decade would require a two-thirds majority in the state House and Senate — a goal that Democrats will not pursue and that Republicans would not support. Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pederson, D-Seattle, told media outlet Washington State Standard: “There’s literally no way to get the results they are talking about before the 2026 election.”
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said: “It would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming to attempt any redistricting efforts in Washington without an active Redistricting Commission and with the 2026 midterms on the horizon.”
Mind you, nobody has seriously proposed redrawing Washington’s maps ahead of schedule. But with Republicans in Texas — and, reportedly, Ohio — threatening to undermine democracy, the issue warrants attention. Rather than playing games with election maps, both parties should embrace a truism of politics: The way to win elections is to support popular policies and have engaging candidates.
