California Gov. Newsom signs legislation calling special election on redrawn congressional map
California Gov. Newsom signs legislation calling special election on redrawn congressional map
California Gov. Newsom signs legislation calling special election on redrawn congressional map
SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats next year, after Texas Republicans advanced their own redrawn map to pad their House majority by the same number of seats at President Donald Trump’s urging.
California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has led the campaign in favor of the map, then quickly signed it — the latest step in a tit-for-tat gerrymandering battle.
“This is not something six weeks ago that I ever imagined that I’d be doing,” Newsom said at a press conference, pledging a campaign for the measure that would reach out to Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. “This is a reaction to an assault on our democracy in Texas.”
Republicans, who have filed a lawsuit and called for a federal investigation into the plan, promised to fight the measure at the ballot box as well.
California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere, contending the president was just responding to Democratic gerrymandering in other states. But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” was dangerous.
"You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”
Texas’ redrawn maps still need a final vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate, which advanced the plan out of a committee Thursday but did not bring the measure to the floor. The Senate was scheduled to meet again Friday.
After that, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature will be all that is needed to make the map official. It’s part of Trump’s effort to stave off an expected loss of the GOP’s majority in the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections.
My one hope is that this eye-for-an-eye redistricting will eventually lead to a constitutional amendment to have all congressional districts drawn via some nonpartisan algorithm rather than by state politicians. Probably over optimistic of me, though.
My only qualm with that is that if you select an algorithm, it needs to be selected, which means that the people in control of that selection can decide what's non-partisan in the selection criteria.
I'm more in favor of defining properties that districts must have and then selecting a districting commission by lottery. Make it so you can't be fired for being on the commission, and pay people 20% over their wage for the time they're on the commission.
If an algorithm has an outcome that seems flagrantly incorrect, you can't subpoena it and ask about its reasoning. The courts are already geared towards handling complaints regarding how a commission handled its responsibilities.
Anyone with a sibling that has had to divide something equally to share it knows how to solve this. One group chooses the algorithm and the second group chooses which side they get to on.
The first group, who have the power to introduce bias disadvantaging one side cannot benefit from it, and worse, they'd hand the power to the second group. It forces the first group to choose a method with built in equality because the second group could force the first group to take the disadvantaged side.
Not for nothin', but there is an entire college discipline dedicated to this called "Conflict Resolution." People trained in it are the ones who tend to get sent by the UN to an accord meeting to negotiate for peace or for mutual use of a contested resource.
It's a whole corner of Sociology with journals and everything.
You really really really don’t want to have a constitutional convention in this current political climate. Especially since republicans control more state legislators than dems do. Imagine the heinous shit the fascists will put in.
You still need states to ratify what was passed during the convention anyway, and even then, it has to be ratified in 3/4s of states, and 9 of the top 10 earners in the US economy are solid blue states with strong blue state governments. 🤷
It's equally likely that it will end with the US being carved into semi-official fiefdoms divided by faction as with the Guelphs and Ghibellines in medieval Italy.
Replace Guelphs and Ghibellines techbro A and techbro B, and yeah, sounds about right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanization
Not a US american so sorry if this is a stupid question, but why aren't these congressional districts the same as administrative districts?
Not a stupid question. Our government is confusing. It's basically still being carried out verbatim, and the entire thing was built and architected in an era when the fastest anyone could travel is by speed of wind.
In the US, government is generally federalist, meaning, each state is its own independent entity (legally speaking) with the autonomy to describe, create, and manage laws specific to their culture in their state. This boils down even further with municipal zones, which are typically related to city or township governance (covering shit like local police, trash, fire, streets).
Each state has the power to define both its voting districts, as well as the way they vote. For example, states in the West traditionally had fewer people over sparser distances, so traditional paper balloting was foregone in lieu of 'caucusing,' which is literally about measuring the amount of bodies or the scale of voices.
In the early 1800s (roughly 40 years after the founding of the country we know now), a man named Eldridge Gerry figured out that it was technically legal under federal law to flip the way districting happens on a per-state basis — instead of people choosing their district, the district chooses its voters.
So, over time, Gerrymandering proved to be one of the only successful ways to gain an edge in a population where conservatism was shrinking and leftism and socialism were building in popularity. It has continued simply because it is a foundation of power in our bicameral (two parties) system.
Just FYI, it is so named "Gerrymandering" after Eldridge Gerry, as well as the fact that his resulting districts looked on a map like a slithering salamander.
No. States are allocated a number of seats in the House of Representatives based on population. It’s up to each state to decide how to subdivide its territory into roughly equal population districts to elect each of their allocated House seats. Texas decided to redraw their map to make them advantageous to the Republican Party, so California has retaliated by redrawing their maps to be more advantageous to Democrats.
The US Senate is much more straightforward: Each state gets two senators, but they’re on non-overlapping six year terms. Only one is up for election at a time, so it’s statewide election for the seat.
How would you define an administrative district? It's likely similar I'd imagine, but not sure where your frame of reference comes from.