As California voters get ready to vote for Prop. 50, the gerrymandering ballot measure, Barack Obama got into the fight to support it.
After having railed in the past that the GOP has illegally gerrymandered maps, Obama says California is defending democracy by doing the same thing.
The assumption was that most blue states would follow suit, but legislators in both Maryland and Illinois have put those plans on hold, at least for now.
You guys know I don’t support gerrymandering, and was vocally against Texas, where I live, changing its maps, allegedly at the request of Donald Trump.
I knew it would result in Democrats doing the same thing, and I felt they had the numbers on their side on this front.
Obama, however, immediately got behind California’s gerrymandering efforts, stating, “There is a broader principle at stake that has to do with whether or not our democracy can be manipulated by those who are already in power.”
He is ignoring the fact that California’s maps are already gerrymandered, and Illinois has one of the worst gerrymandered maps in the country.
There was talk initially from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker that he would be redrawing his maps, which, as we just noted, are already among the worst in the country.
However, state Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) has delayed voting on the matter, saying that it was "not something we're considering this week."
Pritzker responded, "It could happen after that, but right now I think there’s just a lot of conversation going on.”
That does not seem likely, however, as the state’s black caucus is not in favor of spreading out its voters because it believes it would weaken the power the caucus currently has. My guess is that with only three seats to gain, it may not be worth the internal fight.
There was also mention in recent weeks of Maryland redoing its maps, but with only one seat held by the GOP, this could be another case of the bad press just not being worth the risk.
To that point, Democrat Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson sent out a memo on Tuesday telling his colleagues that he would not be redoing the maps.
In his letter, he stated, “In Maryland, 31.5% of registered voters are registered Republicans. We do not know how a court would assess a revised midcycle map and whether the court would use party affiliation as a measure.” He then added, “It is hypocritical to say that it is abhorrent to tactically shift voters based on race, but not to do so based on party affiliation. As we weigh the risk and grounds for mid-cycle redistricting in Maryland, it is important to acknowledge the jurisprudence and work of many to create racially fair maps.”
He told reporters, “If one seat is the difference between whether or not we are standing up to Donald Trump, then we’ve lost from the beginning.”
If 31.5% of voters are Republicans, then why does Maryland only have one of its eight seats, or 12.5% of its total seats, representing Republican voters? It should have at least two, if not three, seats for the GOP if the maps were drawn fairly. I am all for ending gerrymandering completely, but that would mean we stop pretending that Democrat-led jurisdictions do not already have gerrymandered maps because they clearly do.
