Daily Herald opinion: Fighting fire with fire: Redistricting free-for-all portends disaster for American democracy

It is Republicans in Texas who have launched a broad national free-for-all to draw boundaries that favor one party or the other in the makeup of a state’s congressional delegation. It is Republicans in California who provided the chilling portent of where it all will lead.

“What you’re striving for is predetermined elections. You’re taking the voice away from Californians,” complained state Sen. Tony Strickland about Democrats’ approval Thursday of a gerrymandering plan that could sidestep his state’s system of non-partisan redistricting.

And when California Democrats crowed that they had to act in order to counter Texas’ partisan redistricting action earlier in the week, Assemblyman Minority Leader James Gallagher painted an even more devastating picture. “You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens? You burn it all down,” he said.

Ever since President Donald Trump encouraged Texas to light the redistricting match as a strategy to head off the increasingly likely possibility his party will lose control of the House of Representatives in 2026, states across the country have begun engaging in a tit-for-tat race to shape the makeup of the U.S. House by disenfranchising the minority populations of their voters through congressional map making.

Texas and California may have nullified each other with their machinations. Missouri may be headed to a special legislative session to tilt its congressional balance toward Republicans. New York lawmakers are considering an effort to redraw their state’s boundaries for Democrats, even though it could not have an impact until 2028. More Republican moves are being planned or considered in Kansas, Indiana, Florida, Ohio and Maryland. Democrats are rustling boundary papers in Maryland, Wisconsin and even here in Illinois, where gerrymandered redistricting by Democrats has already given the party a 14-3 congressional advantage over Republicans.

Gerrymandering, the process of drawing political district boundaries so as to concentrate one party’s historic majorities in some regions and decrease the opposing party’s influence in others, has been a practice of political disenfranchisement since even before Massachusetts Gov. Eldridge Gerry’s redrawn Senate districts inspired the name in 1812. Now, aided by a narrow 2019 Supreme Court ruling and 21st century technologies that have made the process even faster and more precise, it poses perhaps a greater threat than ever to the structure of American democracy.

But, that may be one redeeming grace of the partisan circus that Texas Republicans set in motion. Headlines from the redistricting fracas have captured the attention of voters from coast to coast, making what was once an arcane political strategy with a funny name into a meaningful warning in every American household that appreciates the moral underpinnings of democracy.

One doesn’t need a doctoral degree in political science to see that the net result of these partisan shenanigans is the very opposite of majority-rule democracy. Nor, is it a matter that affects only the individual politics of a single state. It can render moot the voices of millions of voters from both parties in the policies and laws of the entire nation.

We do have options, though. The Freedom to Vote Act is one. Among other things, the act would require strong, uniform rules for congressional redistricting and ban partisan-drawn congressional boundaries. It passed the U.S. House in 2022 before being stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate. A Machiavellian Trump administration is not likely to welcome such an effort anew, but Democrats in Illinois and Republicans throughout the country who respect and value true, fair democracy must begin moving toward a national Fair Maps policy.

Yes, it can create some technical vulnerabilities for one party or another. But if we truly are to uphold a system in which “every person’s vote counts” means something, we must act.

Failure, as California’s Republicans have sagely predicted, will mean a future of endless fire-vs.-fire fights and the inevitable destruction to which they will lead.