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OPINION

How Democrats Rig Elections and Call it Democracy

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
AP Photo/Mark Black

The Democrat Party is in political free fall. Their approval ratings are sinking, their coalition is cracking, and the message they once rode to power no longer works. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found 63% of Americans now view the party unfavorably — the worst numbers the poll has recorded in three decades.

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This wasn’t sudden. Democrats saw their decline coming — and instead of changing course, they rigged the system to survive it.

After the 2020 census, Democrat-run states didn’t redraw their maps — they obliterated them. Republican districts were axed. Competitive seats were split. What replaced them were Democrat fortresses, designed to shield the party from the voters they’d lost.

And they did all of it with a straight face — insisting it was about “equity” and “representation.” It was a con. They used woke buzzwords to rubber-stamp power grabs. They redrew the lines while lecturing the rest of the country about democracy.

No state exposes that hypocrisy more than Illinois. This past weekend, Texas Democrats fled their own state to protest Republican redistricting — and ran straight to the state with the most gerrymandered map in the nation. That wasn’t a coincidence. It was a confession. They didn’t go to Illinois in spite of its gerrymander. They went because of it.

After the 2020 census, Illinois lost a seat. Democrats used the opportunity to kill off two GOP districts and force Republican incumbents into political cage matches. The Associated Press at the time didn’t even pretend otherwise: the map was drawn to “eliminate Republicans.”

Now, in 2025, Governor JB Pritzker is coming back for seconds — not because of population changes, but because red states dared to fight back. He’s already presiding over one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps in the country — so shameless even Stephen Colbert, of all people, called it out on national television.

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California is the same. Democrats lost a seat. But somehow, when the dust settled, they still came out stronger. Two R+5 districts vanished. A D+5 seat turned into a D+15 stronghold. Vulnerable Democrats were fortified. But Republican districts obliterated. The whole thing was approved by a so-called “independent” redistricting commission — the same commission whose members are filtered through a process built by Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom. 

Now Newsom wants to take it further. He’s floated a second map — one designed to wipe out every remaining Republican district in California. He’s said it publicly. He’s bragged about it on friendly podcasts. There’s no pretense anymore. It’s not about fairness. It’s about total control.

New York’s reading from the same script. Governor Kathy Hochul’s last map was so blatantly rigged it was thrown out in court. So now she’s crafting a new one. Her excuse? “All’s fair in love and war.” Her old map would have gutted GOP-held seats in Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and Central New York. But Democrats aren’t interested in a fight. They want to cancel the contest altogether.

In Nevada, they split up swing districts around Las Vegas and turned them into three safe Democrat seats. In Oregon, they carved up Portland and funneled its vote into surrounding red counties to snuff out opposition.

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In New Mexico, they took one GOP-leaning district and two Democrat seats and sliced the map into three even D+5s. Republican wins didn’t just become hard. They became mathematically impossible.

The mainstream media calls it “geography.” That’s a lie. Competitive maps can be drawn in these states and more. Democrats just won’t draw them. Because deep down, they know what the rest of the country sees: they’ve lost the argument.

And when redrawing the lines isn’t enough, they run to court.

For years, Democrats have weaponized the Voting Rights Act to force red states into race-based gerrymanders. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina have each been forced to draw safe Democrat seats — with Alabama and Louisiana forced to add even more. These aren’t organic maps; they were racial gerrymanders dressed up as justice.

Now the Supreme Court is reviewing whether those districts are constitutional at all. If the justices do their job and strike them down, Republicans need to move — fast and unapologetically. Restore constitutional, race-neutral maps. No excuses. No handwringing. Democrats already built the precedent. All we’re doing is using it.

This is what a dying party does. It doesn’t try to reconnect with voters. It rewrites the rules. Democrats see the writing on the wall. They’re not adjusting. They’re entrenching. And they’re willing to redraw every map in the country if it means keeping just one seat.

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They’re not saving democracy. They’re rigging it to survive it.

And Republicans? It’s time to take the gloves off. The tools Democrats used to entrench themselves are now ours to wield. We don’t need to justify it. The justification has already been written — in Illinois, California, New York, and everywhere else the left has torn up the map in pursuit of power.

We owe it to voters to fight just as hard.

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