In a country I no longer recognize, the goal once was idealistic: one man, one vote, governed by a populace who believed in facts and were educated, rational thinkers. It is no longer. Playing dirty pool with congressional boundaries and money, lots of money, given by unknown individuals to buy and pay for political power, has made that a distant dream. Gerrymandering and secret money in campaigns are planting seeds of Democracy's demise. There are ways to begin to fix the problem: 1) nationwide district boundary commissions held to certain standards, and 2) reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court decision: corporations are not people.
We cannot change those who fall into cults and under the thrall of demagogues or are self-centered tribalists and racists, driven by desire for more power and wealth, but we can at least recreate a structure of government to provide guardrails and boundaries, to give those who support facts and data, independently, provided we can trust them to have a powerful voice and an education system that provides a civics curriculum based on facts and history.
When our founders established the Constitution in 1789, two features that are so dominant now did not exist then: political parties and the high cost of advertising on modern media. Failure to update and control gerrymandering and the high cost of running for a political office have planted the seeds for the most significant structural danger to democracy's survival. We are planting the seeds of democracy's demise by fostering gerrymandering and permitting secret contributions to political campaigns.
Our writers of the Constitution hoped to avoid problems caused by Kings and tyrants, and they devised a kind of government to do it. It worked pretty well, except for when it didn't, the civil war, and the arrival of political partisanship. Political parties are not even mentioned in the Constitution, but the right for citizens to organize and protest peacefully is core to the First Amendment. The founders had seen the damage political parties could cause in England's parliament, and they did not like it. They could not stop party formations, and the partisans set out to carve out powers for their organizations, thereby undermining a key goal of democracy: one person, one vote. A single person would vote using reasoning and would not have more power than another. That was the ideal.
Gerrymandering caused by political parties began in 1812. It was the first blow to one person, one vote when the former Vice President of the US, Eldridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts, reluctantly signed a law permitting congressional district boundaries to be drawn in Massachusetts that looked like a lizzard slamander...so contorted to give the benefit of a safe district to one party to the disadvantage of another. Gerrymandering: The Origin Story | Timeless. Later, gerrymandering was used by segregationists as a way to lump African Americans all in one district, to suppress other districts from having a majority of African Americans. The use of gerrymandering by some states was responsible for the GOP becoming the majority party in the November 2024 election. How Gerrymandering Tilts the 2024 Race for the House | Brennan Center for Justice
In its most extreme stages in 2025, these "safe districts" mean that the winner of the primary is guaranteed to win in the 2026 midterms because the geographical area covered by the district was heavily lopsided in favor of the larger party. This makes party discipline very easy: " go along with the boss, or you won"t make it to the general election because we will put up our loyal guy to run against you in the primary even though both of you claim to be loyal to the same party"...and MAGA is always the big one in the recent primary. Only 27 of 435 Congressional House seats are considered toss-ups. The Competitive Districts that Will Decide Control of the House | Brennan Center for Justice
Now, Texas has attempted to draw districts that divide up liberal Austin voters into a bunch of districts that mix rural and suburban voters with urban voters, to eliminate turn 5 Congressional districts from blue to red, allegedly at the request of Donald Trump, who fears democrats would win more seats than the GOP in 2026. They are violating the law that said redistricting like this could only happen each decade, a year after the census. (Trump 8 7 2025 then calls for doing the census now....in his drive to "fix" the Congressional elections in November 2026. Trump orders 'new' census that excludes undocumented immigrants) This is also an exampleTrump's use of racist animus to rationalize his way to trash laws to suit him and his political prospects.. The Texas legislature broke its own constitutional provision to play dirty by politically gerrymandering for a decade. This mid-decade debacle kicked off a storm of California and other blue states to do the same to the GOP and offset this unethical, rule-breaking plot, fighting fire with fire. To try to subvert the Texas legislature so dominated by the GOP, Democrats marched out to stop a quorum needed to pass bills into law. Google AI The Texas Constitution requires the legislature to redistrict Texas House and Senate seats during its first regular session following publication of each United States decennial census (Section 28, Article III).
Both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, and the Supreme Court has recently ruled that gerrymandering for political advantage is OK, but it cannot be used to harm racial minorities. Racial gerrymandering was not OK. The endgame has been in so many safe districts that the party in power in that district denies the political party in the minority a seat in Congress. As a result, in heavily gerrymandered districts, the party in the majority will be the guaranteed winner in November. There are a few districts left that truly are competitive in the November general elections, and all Trump needs to do is threaten to primary any in his party to vote for what he wants. That threat is effective, and we saw it in action to keep MAGA party discipline in the vote on the unpopular Big Beautiful Bill, forcing even reluctant GOP congresspeople who saw the bill hurt their constituents and saw a backlash forming that endangered their political future to fold to Trump's threat of a primary.
One approach to fix the problem is to restrict redistricting to once every decade, after the population count. The other is to establish a non-partisan boundary-drawing commission in every state instead of relying on the state legislature. Most blue states used the commission process to ensure that the number of districts matches the popular vote outcome and are more competitive. This puts blue states at a disadvantage in fighting fire with fire by drawing boundaries to increase their own number of safe districts to offset what red states are doing mid-decade, like Texas is attempting..
The other travesty and blow to democracy was the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which permitted corporations to contribute money to political groups, and the names of the contributors to the political entity could be hidden. It once was that campaign contributions were listed separately, and voters could decide who to support based on who was financing the campaign. If you didn't like the donor, you might choose to vote for the opposing candidate. Now, there is no way for voters to know where so many of the big bucks are coming from since corporations and individuals can now donate through political committees, keeping their names hidden. Enabling what is called "dark money".That disclusive secrecy cover needs to be overturned by legislation, but both parties see advantages in not disclosing big-ticket donors' names. Voters before the Citizens United decision could at least see who was paying whom to dance to whose tune, but now no more. Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election | Brennan Center for Justice
While federalizing voter counting and reporting would further damage democracy, at least since individual states can control the election process, some states are getting vote counts via servers not linked to the internet. This has made it very difficult for foreign hackers to break in and manipulate the election in the county. They have to do it as a state-by-state individual hack of the process.
