“Curse the Baggins! It’s gone. What has it got in its pocketses? Oh, we guess, we guess, my precious. He’s found it, yes he must have.”
— Gollum, questioning Bilbo Baggins about the One Ring, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”
By The Herald Editorial Board
California, like Texas and possibly soon other states, now has the “precious” in its pocketses, following the voters’ resounding approval Tuesday of Proposition 50, which authorizes the state government to proceed with a mid-decade and partisan redistricting of its congressional maps, an attempt to fix five additional representatives for Democrats for its state delegation.
California had previously relied on a citizens’ redistricting commission, following the federal census, to use that census data to draw state and federal districts that are largely free from partisan attempts to gerrymander those districts and provide fairer reflection of the political leanings and interests of constituents, similar to how Washington state draws its legislative and congressional maps.
But why throw that out the window?
California’s ballot measure followed this summer’s suggestion by President Donald Trump to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — concerned about Republicans losing ground and control in the House in next fall’s midterms — to get its legislature to approve new maps that were likely to increase the Republican congressional delegation from 25 members to 30 for that’s state’s 38 House members.
Seeking five tits for five tats, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, looking to send a message to Trump — while burnishing his stature for a possible presidential run in 2028 — pushed Proposition 50 as a way to even the odds for Democrats in 2026 and restore balance to the Force; oops, wrong fantasy franchise.
Freed by a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found partisan gerrymandering was beyond the reach of federal courts, other states have started pondering partisan redistricting and aren’t bothering to wait for the next census in 2030.
Missouri has redrawn its maps to allow a better shot for Republicans to gain a seat there. North Carolina has done the same. Ditto with Ohio, looking to add two GOP seats.
On the blue side, Virginia’s Democratic state legislators are considering new maps to add two to three Democrats to their current six of 11 seats in Congress, and even Maryland’s Democratic governor has announced a new redistricting commission that could change its delegation makeup, which already favors Democrats with seven of eight seats.
Still other states are considering partisan gerrymanders of their maps, including Indiana and Florida.
Washington state, with Democrats controlling the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature and holding eight of 10 U.S. House seats, considered the redistricting suggestion a nonstarter. Squeezing another Democratic seat from the two Eastern Washington districts was seen as a long-shot, complicated by an amendment to the state constitution, voters’ approval and a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, a margin Democrats don’t enjoy.
Yet, if it passes muster with the Supreme Court, where’s the harm in partisan gerrymandering?
Even many of those California voters approving Prop. 50 weren’t thrilled with reversing their citizens’ commission, but felt Republicans had left them no choice. A survey of 4,000 voters by the Associated Press, found mixed emotions among those supporting the measure; about 9 in 10 California voters said each state’s congressional maps should be drawn by a nonpartisan commission.
There remains fundamental support and agreement among Americans that voters should chose their representatives, not the other way around.
The California measure attempts to acknowledge that conviction. California’s lawmakers, at least, put the measure before voters for their approval, a step not taken in other states. And the new maps will be in force during the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, with the citizen commission’s authority reinstated after the 2030 census.
Yet, stated intentions of allegiance to nonpartisan redistricting — in California and other states — can still fall to the power promised by gerrymandering, if one side is seen as benefiting from the practice.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the One Ring allowed its wearer to control the thoughts and actions of others, enhanced one’s abilities and provided invisibility, yet it corrupted the wearer and fed greed and a loss of self. Tasked with the ring’s destruction, Frodo Baggins succumbed on several occasions to its temptations, and not without consequence.
A study by Harvard researchers in 2023 found that even while wide-spread partisan redistricting in 2020 yielded little change in the makeup of Congress, it still had an effect in strengthening Congress’ existing partisan divisions, creating more “safe” seats for both parties.
“Elections are a way to hold politicians accountable for what their constituency wants,” said Kosuke Imai, a Harvard professor of government and statistics and a leader of the research team. “But if many lawmakers are in safe seats, guaranteed to win by a relatively comfortable margin, there’s less incentive to respond to what voters want.”
Gerrymandering’s consequences — even where sought to correct perceived unfairness — tend to take away the voters’ power to hold officials accountable and instead cements that power with parties and politicians who will always be tempted to wear a ring that “in the darkness binds them.”
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