Congress Can End the Gerrymandering Circus
The once-a-decade cycle of redistricting should be enshrined in law, if it can't be maintained by custom.
You can’t have it both ways.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“Unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American.” So says House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of efforts by Texas Republicans, at the urging of the White House, to gerrymander the state’s congressional map in their favor. If the stratagem is so ethically wrong, though, maybe Jeffries shouldn’t be pushing Democrats to copy it.
Gerrymandering, the practice of drawing district lines to favor incumbents over challengers, or one party over another, isn’t an unconscionable act so much as an unfortunate reality of democratic politics. It’s also nearly as old as the republic itself. Still, it has long been circumscribed by a bipartisan tradition — one that Congress should enshrine in law if it can’t be maintained by custom.