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The Politics Shed- A Free Text Book for all students of Politics.
Operation RED MAP
After Obama's election victory in 2008, a group of Republican tacticians developed a plan to increase their chances of winning congressional seats. They targeted Democrat states due to redraw their house-district boundaries, and concentrated resources to make sure Republicans could take control of the state legislature. After this, new Republican-held state legislatures changed constituency boundaries to maximise Republican success in House of Representative elections.
Political writer David Daley has shown how in various states, such as Pennsylvania, the Republican Party spent significant campaign finance to attack a small number of Democrat state politicians, giving the Republicans a majority that they used to change boundaries for that state. The impact of changing just one state seat from Democrat to Republican was enormous. In 2008, Obama won Pennsylvania and 12 Democrat congressmen won seats from this state. In 2012, Obama won again, but only five Democrats won house elections because the constituency boundaries had changed. In 2012 - the first election using the new maps - Democratic congressional candidates received 100,000 more votes than Republicans, but Republicans won 13 of the 18 seats: 51 per cent of the vote translated into just 28 per cent of the seats. Democrats won by huge margins in just five areas, but more Republicans dominated house elections, with few changes in overall voting patterns.
Texas Gerrymandering 2025
Texas Gerrymandering 2025
Texas Republicans have voted for the arrest of dozens of Democratic legislators who fled the state in an attempt to block a plan to re-draw electoral boundaries. Republican Governor Greg Abbott ordered state troopers "to locate, arrest, and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans". Abbott has also threatened to charge the absent Democrats with bribery if they raised public money to cover the daily fine they incur for boycotting the chamber.
The redrawn congressional map would create five more Republican-leaning seats in the US House of Representatives in Washington DC, where Republicans hold a slim majority. At least two-thirds of the 150-member state legislative body in Texas must be present to proceed with the vote. The quorum became unreachable after more than 50 Democratic lawmakers left the state. Most of the Democrats fled to Illinois. The state's Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Tuesday "we're fighting for democracy, there are no rules anymore". At a press conference, Democrats from Texas and Illinois, as well as party leaders, spoke about the ongoing fight. "Make no mistake about it, the Democratic Party didn't start this fight, but we're not going to roll over," Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Ken Martin said. "They want to fight. We're going to give it to them, and we're going to put every option on the table." The Democrats said they planned to stay away from Texas for two weeks until the end of a special legislative session.
California Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, is a constitutional amendment that will appear on the special election ballot in California on November 4, 2025. The proposition was put on the ballot by the Democrat-led California State Legislature and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and would authorize a mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts, replacing those drawn by the bipartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission. Republicans and Democrats have entered a war in legislatures and courts to narrow the political battlefield of 2026 before a single vote is cast.
Normally, redistricting only occurs after the U.S. Census counts residents in each state every 10 years. A demand from Donald Trump to lock in more Republican-leaning districts in Congress, together with a changing legal landscape around partisan gerrymandering, set off a chain of mid-decade reapportionments.
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