Keystone-SDA
US democratic elected officials in the Texas Parliament announced on Monday by two weeks of self-imposed exile. This decision opens the way to the adoption of a new electoral card wanted to increase the republican majority in Washington.
(Keystone-ATS) “After having gathered the Americans to join this existential battle for democracy, we return to Texas under our own conditions, ready to build the legal file necessary to defeat these anticonstitutional cards before the courts,” said the parliamentary group of Democrats in the House of Representatives of Texas in a press release on the social network X.
Since the beginning of August, the local parliament was the scene of a distance confrontation between republican elected officials and democrats due to the will of the first to redraw the 38 electoral districts of this southern state, the most populous second in the country.
Pushed by Trump
Driven by US President Donald Trump, Texas Republican officials want to modify the electoral card so that the Democratic vote is diluted, a technique called “Gerrymandering”, and thus increase their contingent of 25 elected representatives to the House of Representatives in Washington after the mid-term elections in November 2026.
But the Democrats, in minority in the Texan Parliament, try to oppose the adoption of this redistribution. They fled the state in early August, taking refuge in Chicago or New York, so that a quorum is not reached. Their departure had prevented the Republicans from organizing a vote on the text.
On Monday, by announcing their return, they denounced the will of the Republicans to “silence the voters of the minorities by a racist gerrymandering ‘. They believe that the new electoral card dilutes the voices of the black and Hispanic electorates which, mostly, traditionally vote for the Democrats.
As a sign of response to the initiative of Texas, several Democratic governors have announced their intention to do the same, like that of California Gavin Newsom. But unlike Texas, where the legal process allows this relatively easily redistribution, the Democratic States have for many and even constitutional legislative safeguards.