The electoral card as a political weapon in the United States

Just over a year from the mid-term elections, the American president, Donald Trump, does not want to lose his thin majority in the congress. He thus put pressure to redraw the constituencies in his favor in many republican states. Democratic tenors have already promised to do the same in what promises to be a fight at the country level. Explanations.

We are entitled to five additional seatslaunched the tenant of the White House on Tuesday on the waves of the NBC network. He was referring to Texas, where the republican troops and governor Greg Abbott want to rebound the electoral cards.

These Republican elected officials are about to redraw the federal districts of this state of the South. Their displayed goal is to give their party five more seats in the House of Representatives in Washington, in time for the November 2026 election.

The Republicans currently hold 25 of the 38 seats of representatives of Texas at the American Congress. Among those they covet, three are in urban areas and two along the Mexican border.

This electoral charcuting project made their democratic opponents jump. On the eve of the vote last Sunday, fifty of them fled the state as a protest to find refuge in Chicago, New York or Boston. The vote was therefore blocked in the Texan Legislative Assembly, due to the necessary quorum.

Furious, Governor Abbott threatened them with arrest, even dismissal, if they did not come back quickly. A republican senator has even suggested launching agents from FBI after them.

Why do the Republicans want to repeat Texas?

In the opinion of experts consulted by Radio-Canada, the Republicans feel the hot soup as we approach the mid-term elections. Not only is this ballot traditionally more difficult for the ruling party, but the rate of approval of President Trump is in free fall, points out at the end of the line Victor Bardou-Bourgeois, researcher in residence at the Observatory on the United States of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair of theUqam.

Only 44 % of Americans approve his way of acting as president, according to the surveys aggregator New York Times. A score that could still decrease when it is clearly criticized for its hazardous management of the Epstein file. Not to mention the customs tariffs and budget cuts that arouse the discontent of a fringe of the population.

The Republicans are afraid of undergoing a stinging defeat in 2026. Winning seats in Texas would allow them to compensate for the losses expected in other statesobserves David Niven, professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati.

In addition to Texas, other Republican officials plan to redraw districts to promote their camp, at the request of Donald Trump. This is the case in Missouri, Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire and Ohio.

Is such an electoral charcuting legal?

Short answer: Yes. In the United States, this partisan partisan electoral division is called gerrymandering.

The practice is not new. Even that it dates back to 1812, when the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, approved the creation of a constituency promoting democratic voters. Its strange shape, recalling a salamander (salamander), gave birth to the suitcase word gerrymander.

Since then, the recipe has spread all over the country. With the result of districts with absurd contours, without geographic or demographic logic.

But beware, the gerrymandering is not the prerogative of the Republicans, specify the experts interviewed. Democrats have rediscovered cards to their advantage in several states, such as Illinois, Maryland and California.

In Canada, the electoral division lies with independent commissions. But in the United States, this task is left to the legislators in most cases, sometimes with a right of veto of the governor or a right of gaze of the court.

In other words: elected officials can manipulate the borders of their constituency. The only rule is that the constituency cannot be geographically brokennotes Victor Bardou-Bourgeois, from the Raoul-Dandurand Chair.

However, such electoral redistribution can harm the representation of minorities in Washington, in particular African-Americans, underlines Professor David Niven. It can also weaken the scope of voting voters, promote the maintenance of elected officials in place and feed polarization.

And usually, this exercise is done every 10 years, depending on the new census data, he adds. To redo it now in Texas, where the last overhaul dates from 2021, is unusual to say the least. All this constitutes a real collapse of the electoral redistribution process.

Is it common for a president to claim an electoral division?

Experts are formal: it is unheard of in recent history. The president justifies himself by affirming that his camp deserves more seats in Texas and that the Democrats also practice the partisan division.

The raison d’être of this electoral division controlled by elected officials is to delegate power to states, so that the president does not have his say, notes Alex Keena, politicologist at the Virginia Commonwealth Universityin Virginia. Trump broke this standard, for no valid reason to modify the cards, except to strengthen his political power.

In the past, the justice system served as a counterweight to this type of corruption. On the other hand, the Republicans named judges who closed their eyeshe adds, in reference to the Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene.

As for Donald Trump, he has every interest in keeping his majority in the American Congress by the end of his mandate, adds Victor Bardou-Bourgeois, which he had not managed to do in 2018.

As president, if you want to pass any bill, it must be approved by the House of Representatives and the Senatehe said. President Trump may therefore come up against a fierceor even a dismissal procedure, if one of them becomes the mainly democratic.

And now, what do the Democrats plan to do?

In recent years, several Democratic majority states have sought to make the electoral redistribution more neutral, by supporting the creation of independent or non -partisan commissions to trace the limits of the constituencies. But today, the posture seems to vacillate in the face of the inclinations of the Texans Republicans.

In response, Democratic governors have announced their intention to do the same, like the Californian Gavin Newsom, who said he wanted Fight fire by fire. We have to do the sameadded the new York governor Kathy Hochul, judging that Texas had left no choice for the Democrats.

Unlike Texas, where electoral redistribution is relatively easy, Democratic States like New York or California have established legislative, even constitutional safeguards. It will therefore be complicated for them to compensate for the seats potentially lost elsewhere.

Another problem for democrats is that they are unable to practice “gerrymandering” also effectively, because their electoral base is disproportionately concentrated in cities, where republican votes are fewunderlines Alex Keena, of the Virginia Commonwealth University.