Should Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redraw District Lines and Combat the Lone Star State's Fire with Fire?

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the money elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people notice. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of dominance of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating the state’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to the president’s autocratic consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a functioning political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable taking each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will spur the right to alter their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal point: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that the majority of Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. Only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet columnist