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

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a unclear prerogative of the presidential office in the years since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to move the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all bills must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge perennial must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. At present, the government has been closed all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election next month, has seized the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted extreme biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and the Evergreen State create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state House representation next year; similar boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of authority and look for ways to check his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the measure on strictly ideological democratic grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the process of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy political system will be limited only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to redraw their own maps in response, fails as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change maps that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the reality that most the left, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to choose their constituents, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the amount of suffering he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what opposing it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One aspect that the House and Senate continues to holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to investigate. Even in our era of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to probe the president, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer