The California Supreme Court will not prevent Democrats from moving forward Thursday with a plan to redraw congressional districts.
Republicans in the Golden State had asked the state’s high court to step in and temporarily block the redistricting efforts, arguing that Democrats — who are racing to put the plan on the ballot later this year — had skirted a rule requiring state lawmakers to wait at least 30 days before passing newly introduced legislation.
But in a ruling late Wednesday, the court declined to act, writing that the Republican state lawmakers who filed the suit had “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time.”
When you combine gerrymandering with targeted disenfranchisement, it works great. Dems haven’t been “keeping their powder dry”, they’ve just been lazy and apathetic in the face of a conservative power grab.
In Texas, we’re going to see Abbot crack down hard on liberal leaning corners of Republican staked races. Mass disenfranchisement of students - particularly those in the poorer dorms - plus crackdowns on voting on minority-majority campuses (Texas Southern University in Houston, for instance) go a long way towards strangling Dem turnout. Crackdowns on mail-in voting in liberal leaning elderly suburbs can depress turnout. Deliberate meddling with the certification process for voting machines, harassment of poll workers, and constraints on early voting in big liberal districts can bloat the wait times to vote and discourage participation among liberal voters.
I fully expect to see ICE agents all over polling locations, with a particular eye for anyone who looks illegally colored or otherwise ethnic, in the 2025 municipal cycle