Undermining California’s nationally recognized model for fair redistricting would set a harmful precedent nationwide. In Texas, the League of Women Voters is actively fighting extreme partisan gerrymanders, including filing an amicus brief in the case challenging Governor Greg Abbott’s attempt to expel State Representative Gene Wu. To maintain a consistent national standard, states like California must reject partisan gerrymanders – even those framed as temporary – so we can stand united in opposing them wherever they occur.
Furthermore, temporary exceptions rarely stay temporary. Once you break a safeguard, you don’t just risk one or two or three elections, you set a precedent that future politicians can and will use again. This precedent would invite future gerrymanders in California, including from political actors whose policies we may deeply oppose. Long-term damage to democratic norms will outlast any short-term gain.
We understand the urgency. Authoritarianism is not abstract; it is here, and it is dangerous. President Trump has created a constitutional crisis on multiple fronts – assaults to democracy that the League is at the vanguard of fighting. But the way to fight is not to abandon one of California’s greatest democratic reforms.
Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250814123313/https://lwvc.org/opposition-mid-cycle-redistricting/
In fairness, this is sort of the League of Women Voters’ whole deal: they’ve been involved in opposing gerrymandering and installing independent redistricting commissions state by state for at least 15 years, pursued via the courts and ballot initiatives. It’s been hard work that required coalition building and persistence, and I can understand them feeling like all their hard work to try to reach fair representation is being undermined.
The problem is it’s been mostly states interested in good governance and playing by the rules—i.e., blue states—where it’s been successful and adhered to. It’s a different story in red states. In Utah, for example, voters voted for an independent commission, but the state legislature passed a law to gut the plain language of the ballot initiative by making the commission merely advisory.
Then in 2019 the far right majority on the Supreme Court said there are no rules anymore against partisan gerrymandering in a decision on three separate cases that went before the court that term.
Then last year, in 2024, the even larger far right majority on the Supreme Court made racial gerrymandering so difficult to prove that it’s now essentially legal.
So I’m sorry, League of Women Voters, but the left of center majority in this country cannot unilaterally disarm in the face of repeated and continued provocations by the far right minority, and the existential threat to democracy and our civil society that they pose.
Organizations like this should keep speaking up so that one day we might come back out of the new dark age. Whether this is all legal or not we’ve passed the point of good faith arguments. We pull every dirty trick we can pull or we start reading up on good recipes for leather boot, because we’ll be tasting a lot of it.