The recent gerrymandering of the US Congress by Republicans and Democrats has led to a wave of outrage and hypocrisy. Governors in New York, Texas, and Illinois have declared the move as a “legal insurrection” of the U.S. Capitol, while others like former President Barack Obama have criticized it as the death of democracy. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker accused Republicans of stealing congressional seats and disenfranchising people. However, the redistricting law signed by Pritzker left Republicans with just three of the state’s 17 congressional seats, despite winning nearly half the votes in the last election.
The most telling moment came when Pritzker went on Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS, where he joked about his own unparalleled gerrymandering. This outrage has led to some Democrats retaliating by gerrymandering heavily gerrymandered states, such as Massachusetts, which already has no Republican House members.
In response to the gerrymandering, Democratic strategist James Carville called for the addition of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states and packing the Supreme Court to guarantee that Republicans can never win another election. However, this idea is not without its flaws.
Citizens may eventually get fed up with these self-righteous hypocrites and join together to end gerrymandering once and for all. Reason could still prevail in the country in barring or at least limiting partisan redistricting, and when we do that, these clear-cutting politicians will not have a stump to stand on.
