Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

The US has a long history of gerrymandering, and they are open about it. The single-member, first-past-the-post electoral system in use in the US hugely rewards gerrymandering, so the incentives to engage in it are quite high. It's an accepted part of the political culture. But this comes with two important qualifications.

First, because the conduct of elections is in the hands of the states, not the federal government, and because there are a large number of states and a division of state governments between the two establishment parties, on the national level gerrymanders in one state tend to be offset by gerrymanders in other states. So the net impact of gerrymanders on the make-up of Congress is much less than it would be if the gerrymandering occurred at the federal level, entirely controlled by whichever party held a majority in Congress.

Secondly, it's limited by convention. The US has a national census every ten years; after the census results are published electoral district boundaries are reviewed and revised to take account of the up-to-date information about population levels and distributions. This is called redistricting. If one party controls both houses of the state legislature at this time, they will seek to take advantage of that fact when redistricting. But then the districts are left untouched for another ten years. There is no new information, so why redistrict?

It's the second convention that's breaking down. After the 2020 census, Texas (which had had 36 seats in the House of Representives) was awarded two more, to reflect its increased share of the population of the US, so redistricting (which would probably have happened anyway) was necessary. The redistricting duly happened in 2021, and took effect for the 2022 elections. At the time, there were complaints that the redistricting was unfair, reducing minority representation even though the growth in Texas's population was largely in minority communities. Various lawsuits were launched; these are still working their way through the courts. I think the general view was that, yeah, there was an element of gerrymandering going on in the 2021 redistricting, but nothing out of the ordinary way.

What's different, though is that Texas is now proposing another redistricting, even though there hasn't been a new census, there are no additional seats requiring a district and there is no new census information about population distribution.

What there is information about is how the 2021 redistricting has worked out. Have a look at this table:

As you can see, the Republicans are consistently overrepresented. This is partly the result of the crappy electoral system, and partly the result of gerrymandering. But, as you can also see, They're less overrepresented after the 2021 redistribution than they were before. They don't feel this is right. By Donald Trump's account, they are "entitled" to five more seats, which would give them 74% of the seats. Not all Texas Republicans would go so far, but they mostly do feel that they've obviously stuffed up the gerrymandering in 2021, and they should be allowed to have a do-over. SFAIK they are quite open about this; the stated purpose of the the current redistribution process is to increase Republican electoral advantage, and give them a greater share of the state's congressional seats.

Mid-decade redistricting is unusual, but not unprecedented. When it does happen, it's usually because it is necessary — e.g. because the courts have struck down some aspect of the previous redistricting. Nothing like that has happened here, and the Republicans are quite open about their motivation.

Hence the general dismay — the Republican are transgressing the boundaries of what is considered "acceptable gerrymandering" in US political culture.

Hence the California proposal, which is basically to do the same thing, but in a Democratic-majority state, in which the Democrats are already overrepresented (60% of the vote in 2024; 83% of the House of Representative seats).

You could say that both parties are transgressing the accepted boundaries, or you could say that the Republican transgression shifted the boundary, and California is merely accepting the new boundary. Which of these you choose to say probably tells us which party you support.