Texas GOP Isn’t “Stealing” the Midterms with New Maps, but It’s Not Right

Is the move unsavory? Perhaps.

Is it unethical? Perhaps.

Is it a sign of Republican weakness? Likely.

Is it unorthodox? Yes.

But is it “election rigging” or “election stealing” as many, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, have argued?

No. It’s not. It’s likely not unlawful. And it’s certainly not the type of “election rigging” that Trump and the Make America Great Again movement falsely accused the world of — including me when I served as Maricopa County recorder in Arizona — post-November 2020.

The U.S. Constitution prohibits drawing districts that have a racially discriminatory intent or effect. Districts that are vastly unequal in population are also unconstitutional.

But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause that federal courts cannot invalidate maps simply because they are gerrymandered for partisan purposes. Accordingly, after the 2020 census, many states continued the well-worn, 200-year tradition of drawing districts to benefit one political party.

The Princeton University Gerrymandering Project scores states according to the fairness of their maps: How closely does the presumed partisan split of the map reflect the actual partisan balance of the state’s population?

Texas already gets an F.

The congressional maps of Nevada, Oregon and New Mexico also earn F’s for favoring Democrats.

Conversely, Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and others get F grades because their maps favor congressional Republicans.

Nobody has accused any of those heavily gerrymandered states of trying to rig an election.

Maybe the accusation instead stems from the fact that the Texas Legislature is redrawing the maps mid-decade.

But this, too, is neither unlawful nor unprecedented. Texas did this in 2003, and other states have tried. Only some states, such as New Jersey, have explicit bans on mid-decade redistricting.

Nor does this mid-decade redistricting involve any sort of manipulation of the actual voting or vote-counting process. There aren’t thousands of dead people voting, or ballot tabulation machines being reprogrammed, or fake ballots being stuffed into drop boxes. Or any of the other ludicrous theories concocted by Stacey Abrams after her 2018 loss in Georgia’s gubernatorial election or after Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election.

So, no, this isn’t “election rigging” and it’s not “election stealing.” Please, for the well-being of my fellow election administrators, stop using those terms to describe what is happening in Texas.

But while it might not be “election rigging,” the Texas redistricting plan likely does damage to our democracy.

Americans’ cynicism in respect to government is at an all-time high in. According to an academic poll published in 2024, only “1 in 10 Americans think the government represents them well.” And one-quarter of the country says we need a “total upheaval to get back on track.”

Similarly, partisanship is at a high — for voters and politicians. Gallup recently found that “Republicans and Democrats’ ideology is (the) most extreme in 30 years.”

Extreme cynicism and extreme partisanship fuel civil unrest. They fuel the type of populism that ignores democratic processes. Or they fuel the type of obstructionism that brings government to a halt.

The nakedly partisan mid-decade gerrymandering will only worsen American cynicism and partisanship. It tells Americans that elections aren’t about listening to constituents and addressing their needs. Elections aren’t about ideas. And elections aren’t about solutions.

Instead, elections are purely about party power, and the parties will use whatever tricks possible to gain that power.

Who’s supposed to love such a system?

The political explosion that the Texas Legislature has set off isn’t “election rigging.” But it isn’t good.