‘This Is How a Democracy Withers and Disappears’: Gerrymandering Could Cost Democrats the House
Democrats managed to squeeze out a five-seat majority in the House of Representatives in 2020 but Republican gerrymandering could strip it away in next year’s midterm elections, according to a report that was published in The Guardian on Monday.
Correspondent David Daley warned that partisan districts drawn up by the GOP may prove to be a more effective strategy than broadening its voting base. That concern is not unfounded either because Republicans are already boasting about setting off “one of the many time bombs that threatens representative democracy and American traditions of majority rule,” as Daley put it.
“We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country. That alone should get us the majority back,” Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX) said at a right-wing religious conference last week.
“We control redistricting,” said New Hampshire Republican Party Chair Stephen Stepanek. “I can stand here today and guarantee you that we will send a conservative Republican to Washington as a congressperson in 2022.”
Daley did the math and it is truly alarming.
“Everyone could vote the exact same way for Congress next year as they did in 2020 – when Democratic candidates nationwide won more than 4.7m votes than Republicans and narrowly held the chamber – but under the new maps that will be in place, the Republican party would take control,” he wrote, adding that “all they need to do is rework maps to their favor in states where they hold complete control of the decennial redistricting that follows the census – some of which they have held since they gerrymandered them 10 years ago. Now they can double down on the undeserved majorities that they have seized and dominate another decade.”