Texas governor orders arrest of Democrats who fled Trump-backed gerrymander stoush

3 months ago 22

Washington: The Republican governor of Texas ordered the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who left the state to stymie a Donald Trump-backed attempt to redraw electoral boundaries, in an extraordinary political stoush over the gerrymandering that pervades America’s electoral system.

The controversy surrounds a Republican plan to substantially redraw congressional districts around Trump’s 2024 voters in the hope of gaining up to five additional seats for the Republican Party at next year’s midterm elections.

Texas Speaker Dustin Burrows (centre) at a press conference at the state Capitol in Austin.

Dozens of Democrats left the state in protest, and to deny the quorum required to debate the proposed maps. After they failed to attend a special legislative session on Monday (Tuesday AEST), the remaining lawmakers passed a motion authorising the speaker to issue warrants for their “civil arrests”.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, subsequently said he had instructed his Department of Public Safety “to locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans”.

The state’s attorney-general, Ken Paxton, accused the Democrats of a publicity stunt and “a cowardly desertion of their responsibilities”.

“These liberal lawmakers are not above the law,” Paxton said. “It’s imperative that they be swiftly arrested, punished and face the full force of the law for turning their backs on the people of Texas.”

Officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety inside the state capitol on Monday.

In Texas, as in many US states, there is no independent electoral commission to determine boundaries. Instead, that job belongs to the legislature, with the courts able to step in if lawmakers fail to decide the maps in time.

Partisan officials will often draw boundaries that concentrate opponents’ votes in a very safe seat, making the surrounding seats easier to win.

Australia’s most well-known example of gerrymandering was under Queensland’s Nationals premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who oversaw a system – more accurately described as malapportionment – in which many rural seats contained far fewer people than urban seats.

Gerrymandering has a long history in the US, with both sides of politics implicated. Earlier, in an interview on Fox News, Abbott conceded the proposed map constituted electoral gerrymandering, but said it was legal.

President Donald Trump with wife Melania and Texas Governor Greg Abbott (right) last month after the state’s devastating floods killed more than 130 people.

“Gerrymandering can be done, or drawing lines can be done, on the basis of political make-up, as in Republican versus Democrat, and there’s nothing illegal about that,” Abbott said.

“We have the authority, legally under redistricting law, to draw districts that align with the voter preferences of the voters of the state of Texas.”

Democrats who fled to New York and Chicago scoffed at the governor’s threats of arrest, noting subpoenas in Texas would not affect them interstate.

But they also pressed the seriousness of the situation, arguing the Republicans’ push to redistrict electorates was a dark moment for the country.

“When a president can pressure a state to rig maps in favour of one political party, we’ve lost touch with the democratic process,” the Texas arm of the Democrats party said on social media.

Democrat representative James Talarico said Republicans talked tough and made threats on social media, “but when Donald Trump comes calling, all they can do is bend the knee, all they can do is bend over”.

The stoush over electoral boundaries comes as Texas continues to recover from devastating floods last month that killed more than 135 people, including dozens of children.

In Washington, Republicans are defending a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives and would ordinarily be expected to lose seats at the midterm elections under a Republican president. In 2018, Democrats won 41 seats and control of the chamber.

Trump currently enjoys a Republican majority in the House and Senate, but his agenda would be frustrated for the remainder of his term if the House were to flip.

Australian election analyst Ben Raue said US political parties were getting more sophisticated in their partisan gerrymandering, using computer programs with large amounts of data that often produced boundaries that were highly unusual in shape.

“As the norms of American democracy are broken down, it’s become more acceptable to more brazenly attempt to distort the playing field,” Raue said.

Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic senator from Michigan, said it was time for the entire US to abandon the partisan gerrymander and adopt an independent civic commission to draw “rational lines” based on geography, as her home state did in 2018.

“This is something that both parties do … blue states and red states often engage in partisan redrawing,” she acknowledged in a video. “This to me is a real problem for democracy.”

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