(amended transcript of video)
Last night’s results in Virginia were historic, and not just because they make it quite likely that the Democrats will regain control of the House.
Sometimes things have to get a lot worse before they can get better. That’s the case with gerrymandering, where you’re seeing horrible anti-democratic maps on both sides right now.
It started with Trump doing something very squirrely, getting the governor of Texas to redraw maps in the middle of a decade so he could keep his stranglehold on the House. That’s not something that we’ve done in this country since the 19th Century. Trump’s aim was to get five new seats. Turns out, the Republicans might only get three of those seats and could lose some other ones in Texas that they thought were safe.
Meanwhile, the Democrats decided to play tough, as they should. So in California, they went to the voters and picked up five seats with new gerrymandered maps.
Then the fight came to Virginia. Now, Democrats, in a state that’s roughly 50–50, will likely win nine out of 10 seats. Florida will try to retaliate but the whole thing is looking like a wash.
What does that do beyond this fall’s midterms? It makes the end of gerrymandering a real possibility.
There’s a bill that the Democrats have sponsored for the last few years called the Freedom to Vote Act. It does a number of good things—encouraging early voting, mail-in voting—that a lot of Republicans, unlike Trump, believe helps their rural voters. There’s potential buy-in for that part of the bill even if some other provisions get dropped.
And now, there might also be at least some buy-in for the bill’s provision that gets rid of partisan gerrymandering, which the U.S. Supreme Court said recently was something that the federal government could legally and constitutionally do.
So flash forward to 2029. Democrats introduce this bill, it passes the House, it’s going to be signed by a Democratic President, but they need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
Let’s say, they need six, seven, eight Republican votes. A number of Republicans, looking at Virginia last night, were saying, “Hey, maybe this gerrymandering game’s not working out for us. Let’s go for fair maps, like Schwarzenegger got in California.”
If that happens, a wretched tradition going back to the 1790s, when Governor Elbridge Gerry drew a map in Massachusetts with districts that looked like salamanders, will end. That tradition, which is fundamentally anti-democratic, will be part of our past, not present.
Check back in three years. You heard it here first.
