(The following column was written Aug. 11. On Aug. 19 all Texan Senate Republicans voted 88 vs. 52 Democrats to approve five gerrymandered districts.)
The hypocritic losers who howled the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” (not!) are now themselves doing the “rigging.”
They are trying to rig the mid-term elections by gerrymandering five U.S. House districts in Texas to favor Republican candidates in the 2026 mid-term elections. It’s a brazen attempt to shore up Trump’s autocratic power by ensuring enough U.S. House Republicans will win to ensure his reckless control continues.
After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him to “find 11,780 votes” – a shameless attempt to overturn the election. Wisely, Raffensperger rejected that crooked command.
Flash forward to July 2025. Trump called the Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and told him he needed at least five more Republican U.S. House representatives to retain his (Trump’s) iron-clad control of the country. Unlike Raffensperger, most Texas Republicans gleefully granted Trump’s request/order. They eagerly jumped all aboard the gerrymandering train.
Recall Elon Musk’s “chainsaw” assaults against so-called “waste, fraud, abuse” in government agencies? Well, this is worse. It’s wielding a sledgehammer to smash voting rights, to rig elections and to undermine the very foundation of American Democracy, which begins at the ballot box.
So many Americans are unaware of the dangers to democracy caused by gerrymandering. When that subject is raised, all too many yawn with ho-hum, who-cares attitudes.
It’s time to listen up:
Apportionment
The U.S. Constitution requires representatives elected to the U.S. House must be elected to reflect congressional districts’ populations within each state. That is supposed to ensure House decisions reflect fairly population distribution in House districts (currently 435 of them) in the nation, one representative from each district.
Redistricting
Obviously, over time there are population shifts within each state, each district. To balance that shift, to ensure every district in each state has about the same number of residents, “redistricting” is required, based on U.S. Census data surveys taken every 10 years. Thus, district border lines must be adjusted, redrawn if needed.
Gerrymandering
“Gerrymandering” is a term to describe a perversion of the redistricting process. It happens when a party in power redraws voting district boundaries to favor that party’s candidate(s) in elections. It’s a way to rig elections. It’s been described as “politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.” Gerrymandering has been perpetrated now and then by both Democrats and Republicans.
That odd word “gerrymandering” originated in 1812 when Massachusetts Gov. Eldridge Gerry signed a bill creating a skewed partisan district in the Boston area. The district’s newly drawn boundary lines were so twisted and wiggly that, on a map, it resembled a squirming salamander. One newspaper called it a “gerrymandered” district – “Gerry” being the governor’s last name and “mander” from salamander.
Well, here we are more than 200 years later, with reckless Texan cheaters trying to rig the mid-term elections by resorting shamelessly to gerrymandering.
Solution?
The big problem is states can choose three ways to implement the redistricting mandate every 10 years, per U.S. Census data. One method, the worst one, is to let the majority party in a state’s legislature redraw congressional-district lines. That is an invitation for corruption, glaringly obvious now in Texas.
In fact, Texas passed “special legislation” to allow for redistricting (in this case, gerrymandering) at the five-year point between U.S. Census figures instead of after the next census in 2030. They are “gerryrigging” before mid-term elections. How convenient!
Gerrymandering remains a dire threat to free and fair elections. The only way to rid us of that subterfuge is for the U.S. Congress to pass, at long last, a law that requires every state to appoint totally non-partisan commissions comprised of census-population data experts who are overseen in their work, every step of the way, by a scrupulously bipartisan citizens’ committee.
