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Transcript:
If you live in California, I need you to vote “yes” on Proposition 50, the special election that is currently happening right now and which ends on November 4th. If you live in any other Blue state, I need you to contact your Democratic legislators and ask them to do the same. If you live in a Red or Purple state, call them and tell them to fight.
Two years ago, I made a video talking about how bad gerrymandering is in the United States. If you missed that one, I’ll give you the summary: “gerrymandering” is the practice of drawing district maps in ways that are unfair to one of the two political parties in the US. Here’s a chart showing how you can turn a 60% advantage for blue to a 100% advantage for blue, or even a 60% advantage to red.
I pointed to recently published research that found that gerrymandering is rampant across the US and that it’s biased towards Republicans, giving them two extra seats on the national level in the US House of Representatives. But Democrats do it as well, and the researchers found that regardless of who is doing it, gerrymandering “reduces electoral competition and makes the partisan composition of the US House less responsive to shifts in the national vote.” Because when a politician feels that their seat is safe, they are less likely to actually do their job and represent the interests of their constituents.
So, that was in 2023. Now it’s 2025. Why am I now telling you to ignore all that and tell your Democratic representatives to gerrymander the shit out of your state immediately?
Well, I don’t actually mean for you to ignore that. In fact, it’s very important that you remember that takeaway: even when it’s done in favor of Democrats, gerrymandering is bad and harms democracy. But currently, it’s the Republicans who have established a fascist, authoritarian state and they’re trying to keep it that way, and those of us who would like to eventually claw our way back into a democracy must use every tool available to us. And gerrymandering is one of those tools.
To recap, the Republicans in Texas have started redistricting their state to negate the votes of Democrats and take up to five seats away from them. So California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, responded by launching this special election, which would pause our state’s bipartisan independent commission that ensures election fairness and allow legislators to redraw the maps for the next three elections, until 2030. They will then essentially take seats from Republicans and give them to Democrats.
Then the Republicans in Missouri responded by gerrymandering Kansas City, splitting up liberal Black voters and absorbing them into safe Republican districts. But unlike Texas, voters in Missouri actually have the right to block unpopular legislation using “the people’s veto.” So a group called People Not Politicians Missouri are gathering signatures to get the referendum on the ballot, and in an action that in any other year would be considered wildly undemocratic, the Missouri State General is SUING the voters for trying to stop the representatives from forcing their will upon the people. Incredible shit.
The funny thing is that it is technically illegal for states to gerrymander in an explicitly racist way. In Utah, legislators ignored an independent bipartisan commission anointed by voters and split up the Black vote in Salt Lake City, and the Utah Supreme Court acknowledged that yeah, you can’t do that. Texas is also facing legal challenges to their proposed new plan, which means that they might not be able to get all five seats that they want.
So when it comes to gerrymandering at the moment, it seems that the Democrats might be winning. Polls show that Yes on 50 is very popular in California, which means that Dems might actually gain a seat or two when everything shakes out. That’s why it’s important for us as voters to pester the shit out of our representatives and go through with this gerrymandering. But we must remember the research that shows that this gerrymandering will ultimately be a bad thing. Proposition 50 is temporary, so if we succeed in pulling the US back to democracy in a few years, we agree to let the Republicans have their representatives back. It’s like using a helicopter to rescue someone from a flood. Once they’re safe, they don’t just keep commuting everywhere in the helicopter. Those things are dangerous. Ride the subway you weirdo.
Anyway, if things are looking so rosy for the Democrats’ gerrymandering efforts, why am I encouraging you to go annoy your congress critter? Because things are, in fact, looking very, very bad. And it’s all because of, you guessed it, the fucking Supreme Court of the United States. F-SCOTUS.
This week, they reheard two cases known as Louisiana v. Callais, and the reporters monitoring the court are saying it sounds like the authoritarian-led panel is going to go ahead and use this as an opportunity to destroy the final salient section of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the VRA is what ended the Jim Crow era in the US because it enshrined the rights of minorities to have their voices heard, prohibiting the purposeful redrawing of electoral maps to negate their votes. This was particularly effective in the South, where most Black people in the US still live.
The central question of Louisiana v. Callais is whether or not Louisiana had the right to create a second majority-Black district. The opponents are claiming that doing so violated Section 2 of the VRA because the state purposely did it to give Black people more power, which White voters argue is racist. So they’re using the VRA to get F-SCOTUS to obliterate the VRA, which would send the US back to a time when racial minorities were denied their right to vote. All those Southern states will immediately redraw their districts to exclude minorities who typically vote Democrat. According to the groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter, “up to 25 – 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus and as much as 11% of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus could lose their seats.” Nationwide, this “could help the GOP secure an additional 27 U.S. House safe Republican seats when compared to the 2024 House maps – at least 19 directly tied to the loss of Section 2 – enough to lock in one-party control of the U.S. House.”
And when they say “lock in,” they mean for the next generation.
So if the court reporters are correct and SCOTUS is about to obliterate the VRA, things would be very, very bad, for the next several decades at least. States like Texas, where voters are using the VRA to fight back against the racist gerrymandering, would suddenly be able to do whatever they want to their maps.
And that is why I’m encouraging you to tell your Democratic representatives that you want them to fight back and fuck it, you want them to fight dirty. Gerrymander the ever-loving-fuck out of those maps. Remove representation from the people who do not want representation for anyone but themselves, the people who want a fascist king.
Ah, which brings me to my final request: Saturday, October 18 is my birthday! It is also the day of the next nationwide No Kings protest. Visit nokings.org to find the closest protest happening near you, and please stay safe. Protestors in Portland and Chicago have had a lot of success fighting fascism with humor. And if things get spicy, please revisit my video from June about how to deal with tear gas and other state-sanctioned weapons the Gestapo uses against US citizens. Stay safe, and help save democracy.
