Trego's Mountain Ear

There’s a bit of discussion going on about redistricting Texas seats in the House of Representatives between Decennial Censuses. The Governor of Illinois has badmouthed it as Gerrymandering. Illinois has 3 Republican Representatives and 14 Democrats. In the last election, Kamala Harris got 54.37% of the votes, Trump got 43.47%. 3 out of 17 is 17.64 percent. The County election map looks like this:

In California, Democrats outnumber Republicans about 2:1. In California’s Congressional Delegation, there are 43 Democrats and 9 Republicans. California becomes a bit more special when you remember that house seats are apportioned by population, not by number of citizens. According to https://www.kff.org/ , California has 33,398,800 citizens and 4,739,400 non-citizens. A little over 14% of California residents are non-citizens. If you contrast that with Montana’s 1,096,297 citizens and 9,300 non-citizens, less than 1% of Montana residents are non-citizens.

Now, back to the proposed Texas redistricting:

Texas has 26,713,800 citizens, and 3,081,700 non-citizens. A higher percentage of citizens in the population than California. I suspect that, from my perspective, all three example states will wind up Gerrymandered – it’s just a question of which party is doing the Gerrymandering.

Let’s give Elbridge Gerry his due – initially, the man opposed political parties, and the original Gerrymander cartoon appeared only after he had given up and signed on with one party. I doubt if Elbridge Gerry ever got so ambitious as the politicians in Illinois, California and Texas have. To be fair to Gerry, he signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, served as the fifth Vice-President of the United States, refused to sign the Constitution because it did not include a Bill of Rights, and is the only signer of the Declaration buried in DC.