SOLVE NETWORK
Non-Partisan Talking Points
Background
Texas lawmakers passed new Congressional voting maps this summer, in two rare middecade redistricting sessions called in response to President Donald Trump’s demand to shore up Republican power in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is a dangerous break from redistricting norms, which require maps to be redrawn after the U.S. Census is taken every 10 years. Texas’ redistricting stands to further disenfranchise Black, Latino, and Asian communities and voters in the state who already were subject to one of the country’s most racially gerrymandered and unfair Congressional voting maps curtailing their collective voting power. Meanwhile, states with Democratic legislative majorities, like California, are considering redrawing their voting maps in response to Texas’ gambit, several seeking to abandon voter-initiated redistricting reforms that rightly put voters, and not political parties, first.
Gerrymandering manipulates election outcomes and harms everyday voters by letting elected officials choose their voters instead of voters selecting their representatives. We must think about longer term strategies that prioritize the voices of the electorate, not the elected.
Talking Points
- What’s happening in Texas is a dangerous attempt to take power away from the voters and put politicians’ demands ahead of the people’s will. This attack on voters of color in Texas treats these communities as political chess pieces and ignores their rights to equal representation.
- Manipulating voting maps to undermine people’s ability to choose representatives of their choice is wrong no matter where it happens.
- When we have two political parties locked in partisan arms races to manipulate maps to their advantage, voters and communities of color suffer because they lose the ability to choose representatives who are accountable and responsive to their needs.
- We must have fair voting maps that respect and uphold the rights of Black, Latino, Asian and Native voters who have faced historical discrimination as well as modern-day barriers to equal representation.
- What’s happening in Texas is wrong and a dangerous break from how redistricting usually works, ignoring the needs of communities of color to deliver results in partisan games. We are long overdue for redistricting reforms that put people and voters ahead of the ambitions of politicians.