Texas electoral map | When Trump is accused of “fucked” an election

If we trust the history of the mid-term elections, democrats have good chance of delighting the Republicans their slim majority in the House of Representatives in November 2026. But will these elections be fair and equitable?

The question arises acutely while the Republicans of Texas seek to adopt a new electoral card intended to give their party five more seats in the House of Representatives, just in time for the mid-term elections.

This approach is highly unusual. Usually, the States redesign their electoral districts after the publication of census data, at the beginning of a decade. Thus, Texas adopted a new electoral card in 2021. It corresponded to the growth of its population, which gave it two more seats in the House of Representatives.

But now the Texas Republicans are trying to impose a new electoral card in the middle of the decade, under the pressure of Donald Trump and his political advisers. According to the president, the Texan operation is expected to inspire other states led by Republicans.

Recently, Florida, through the voice of its governor, Ron Desantis, said that it could follow suit in Texas, as well as the Missouri.

All this to prevent Democrats from seizing the majority in the House and exercising the related powers, among which are those to investigate the president and launch a dismissal procedure against him.

Equal

But red states are not the only ones wanting to imitate Texas. Some blue states, such as California, New York and Illinois, have reported their refusal to give up while Donald Trump and his republican allies “fake the game”, to use the words of Gavin Newsom, governor of the Golden State.

And thus looms on the horizon a “total war” around the electoral cards, to quote the words of a Democratic representative of Texas. War where certain blue states which have adopted reforms to depoliticize the electoral division promise to get rid of it, at least the time of an electoral cycle. Their goal: to fight on equal arms with Texas, Florida and the other red states which practice “Gerrymandering”, or the cold meating of electoral districts for partisan purposes.

And too bad for political polarization that such a tactic would not fail to accentuate.

“If the Republicans are ready to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, they do not give us the choice; We have to do the same, “said the New York Democrat, Kathy Hochul, also used the word” war “on Monday to describe the situation.

Easier to say than to do. To redraw a new electoral card to the advantage of the Democrats, the governor of New York will have to modify the constitution of this State, which entrusts an independent committee the responsibility of redrawing the electoral districts of the Empire State, once every ten years.

In California, Governor Newsom advocates another approach. He plans to appeal directly to voters during a referendum which would be held next November. According to this scenario, it would be up to the voters to decide whether or not to bypass the independent commission of the state responsible for redrawing the electoral districts.

“We will address the citizens of this state in a transparent way and we will ask them to take into account the new circumstances, to take these new realities into account,” said Governor Newsom last week. “It will not be on the sly. This will not be done by members of a group or a private organization. [La nouvelle carte] Will be subject to the examination of the voters in a very transparent way, so that they know exactly what they do and that they can return in 2030 to the original form, with an independent redistribution intact. »»

The new electoral card envisaged by Governor Newsom could give five more seats to the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Departures to avoid a vote

The process is less complicated in Texas. In this state, the majority party in Parliament is responsible for redrawing the electoral districts of the State. Result: even before the current controversy, the Texas electoral card offered a fine example of the consequences of electoral charcuting.

In 2024 Donald Trump won 56.2 % of the votes in Texas. However, thanks to the electoral card in force during this election, the Republicans won 66 % of the 38 seats in Texas in the House of Representatives. The new electoral card aims to bring this share to 79 %.

It is still necessary that this new card is subject to a vote in the two chambers of the Texan Parliament. However, dozens of democratic representatives of the Texas Chamber left the state on Sunday, depriving the republican majority of the quorum necessary for the holding of a vote on the new constituencies.

Threatened with being arrested or dismissed by the Texas Republican Governor, Greg Abbot, most of these democratic representatives have found refuge in Illinois. While waiting for their inevitable return to Texas, the Democratic Governor of this State, JB Pritzker, welcomed them with open arms, promising them to fight fire by fire.

“Trump imagined a new ploy to fake the system by passing a corrupt redistribution plan in the middle of the decade which would steal five seats in the congress, silenced millions of voters, in particular blacks and Latinos,” said Governor Pritzker on Sunday.

Irony wants the Illinois to be one of the states led by Democrats who also practice electoral charcuting. In his discharge, Lincoln’s country has never done it twice during the same decade.