The midterm race is pressuring both parties to win seats in Congress. The Trump administration is worried about the Republican Party losing both the House and the Senate, leading the president to urge states like Mississippi and Tennessee to redraw voting lines.

Virginia and California have responded by voting on new districts that would create more Democratic seats. 

This has caused an uproar from both sides. Is any of it fair?

If the GOP didn’t want partisan gerrymandering to take place, why did they do it themselves? The GOP is only upset with Democratic gerrymanders because it doesn’t benefit their party. I believe anyone can see the hypocrisy in that.

It’s hilariously illogical that they think only they have the power to redistrict. If they didn’t want partisan gerrymanders to happen, then they wouldn’t have blocked bills like the 2021 For the People Act, which aimed to ban partisan gerrymandering.

Ken Domer, a 56-year-old voter in Orange, California, who used to vote Republican, also doesn’t think gerrymandering is good for the political system. 

“I believe that it’s to benefit one group over another,” Domer said. “In our system, it should be where everyone has equal access to an equal vote and hopefully representation.”

However, Domer feels like he needs to support California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50.

He said he was a Republican until the first Trump administration took office and is now a moderate. He thinks current Republicans do not have the same character as they once did. 

“Instead of working with each other across the aisle, we’ve just been pushing each other back and forth and fighting,” Domer said.

He says Democrats in states like his shouldn’t have been pushed to this point to make this decision — and I agree.

 The Trump administration expected the Democratic party to roll over and accept their partisan gerrymandering. Now they’re shocked that Democrats are stooping down to their level and abusing the system in the same way.

Now in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has ruled that Louisiana doesn’t need to consider race when redistricting. That decision only amplifies this mess.

Christina Rivers, an associate professor of political science at DePaul, believes the court’s decision will have major repercussions for racial minorities’ voting power, especially for Black Americans, who largely vote Democratic.

Rivers said the decision will make it easier to gerrymander now that race equity doesn’t need to be considered when considering political representation. She also doesn’t appreciate the court’s “colorblindness” approach. She says that treating everyone the same, especially those who face inequality, does nothing but perpetuate that inequality.

“If the people in that district are largely Black, they’re not going to be able to have any recourse because the state can say, ‘Oh, we were just drawing on partisan grounds, not racial grounds,’” Rivers said.

In essence, the GOP can pretend that race has nothing to do with its gerrymandering decisions and still take away Black Americans’ voting power. Black candidates are less likely to win, and Black voters will most likely be represented by candidates they don’t like. 

“It doesn’t prevent them from voting; it just means that they’re probably not going to win,” Rivers said.

The point Rivers brings up about colorblindness is something especially frustrating to see our administration utilizing. This ideal has been used to dismantle DEI laws without considering why we have those protections in the first place. 

Even if today’s Republican party truly believed in equality for all races, that argument is immediately sideswiped by the fact that there is no political equality. The people who are in power get to have it all — that’s it. 

I believe we need to ban partisan gerrymandering. More people’s votes will count, and we’ll have a more stable political environment where people are actually represented.

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