Barack Obama opened up on Texas Republicans’ recent attempts to gerrymander the state to secure more seats.
The former president took to social media Tuesday, deriding Texas Republicans for attempting to redraw the state’s districts and secure another five seats in the House of Representatives. Doing so would help alleviate concerns that the right would lose the House in the midterm elections.
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“We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections,” Obama wrote. “This is a power grab that undermines our democracy.”
Texas Democrats left the state earlier this weeks in order to stop Republicans from gerrymandering the state in order to redraw the district maps. This has led to outcries from both sides of the aisle including from Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who angrily said that the politicians “abandoned their posts and turned their backs on the constituents they swore to represent.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough also explained on “Morning Joe” how the proposed redistricting would be “so out of whack” that Republicans would still win even if races came down to a split vote.
“That guy, and the rest of the Texas legislature, and Greg Abbott want to rig the system,” Scarborough said. “They want to make sure that Republicans are over-represented on election day. They want to rig the process. And so they’re acting so indignant about it!”
The MSNBC host explained how attempts to make the state even more in favor of Republicans could backfire on the party by setting a precedent for gerrymandering to be done in other states.
“If Texas achieves what they want to achieve, then California will go back! And then they will draw up even more rigged lines that will help Democrats,” Scarborough said. “And New York State will do it, and who knows? Maybe then Florida decides to — I mean, it really is, it’s an idiotic thing to do.”
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