Elected Democrats in the Texas Parliament announced, on Monday, August 18, their return to the State, ending two weeks of self-imposed exile and thus opening the way to the adoption of a new electoral card, wanted by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to increase his majority at Congress in Washington. “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 unconstitutional cards before the courts”said the Group of Democrats in the Chamber of Representatives of Texas in a press release on the social network X.
The local parliament was, since the beginning of the month, the theater of a distance confrontation between elected representatives of republicans and democrats because of the will of the first to redraw the 38 electoral districts of this state of the South, the second most populated in the country.
Democrat vote diluted
Pushed by Donald Trump, Texas Republican officials want to modify the electoral card so that the Democratic vote is diluted, a technique named gerrymanderingand thus increase by five members their contingent of 25 elected officials in the House of Representatives in Washington after the mid-term elections, in November 2026. But the Democrats, in a minority in the Texan Parliament, oppose this redistribution. They fled the state in early August, taking refuge in Chicago or New York, so that the quorum was 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 of “Siled the voters of minorities by a gerrymandering racist “. They believe that the new electoral card dilutes the voices of the African-American and Hispanic electorates which, mostly, traditionally vote democratic.
As a sign of response, several Democratic governors have announced their intention to do the same, such as the Californian 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.
Gavin Newsom, to whom many observers lend presidential ambitions, will thus have to submit to referendum his project aimed at putting an independent commission for electoral cutting. If the Californians approve of it, the local parliament (with a majority of democrat) can set up a new card which should provide them with five additional seats, as in Texas.
