(Los Angeles) Californians approved on Tuesday, according to several American media, a text aimed at redistricting their electoral map in favor of the Democrats, who seek to compensate for what the Republicans did in Texas under pressure from Donald Trump.
The American president wants to maintain and consolidate the narrow Republican majority he has in the House of Representatives during the crucial mid-term legislative elections in a year.
Donald Trump therefore obtained in August that Texas, a very Republican state, redraw its districts in order to send five more Republican elected officials to Congress next year.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies submitted to a referendum a text intended to give five additional seats to Democrats in this largely Democratic state.
The large majority obtained on Tuesday constitutes a personal success for Mr. Newsom, who asserts himself as a national figure of the Democratic opposition to the president.
In the United States, electoral districts must in principle be delimited after a national census carried out every ten years, so that the electoral map theoretically reflects the population living there.
But partisan electoral redistributions are commonplace, and make it possible, via extremely distorted maps, to isolate groups of voters and over-represent others.
In California, former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put an end to this practice and the electoral map was entrusted to an independent commission.
Concretely, “Proposition 50” approved Tuesday by Californians will give back to elected officials the power to redraw constituencies.
The stakes are high on a national scale one year before the mid-term elections, with parliamentary majorities being played out within a few seats.
If Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives in Washington in the 2026 elections, they will have free rein to launch parliamentary commissions of inquiry and poison the end of Mr. Trump’s second term.
On Tuesday, Democrats also saw socialist Zohran Mamdani elected mayor of New York and two Democrats become governors of Virginia and New Jersey.
