Democrats to increase seats in California's federal Congress by redistricting

The California Senate has approved a redistricting measure in the most populous US state that aims to give Democrats five more seats in the federal Congress, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.

The plan is designed to neutralize the expected acquisition of the same number of additional seats by President Donald Trump's Republicans in the legislative body by redistricting the boundaries of the electoral districts in the second most populous state in the US - Texas.

California Democrats, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, have a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature. They hope to have the redistricting passed today so it can take effect in the special election on November 4, Reuters notes.

Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged that their goal in Texas is to consolidate their party's political influence and preserve its fragile majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections next November. Those elections are already shaping up to be contested.

Democrats, for their part, have described their attempt to abandon the usual independent, bipartisan redistricting process in California, approved by voters in 2008, as a temporary, "emergency strategy" to fight what they see as extreme moves by Republicans to manipulate the system, Reuters reports.

Both parties broke with the tradition of redrawing US electoral districts every 10 years after the corresponding census. They took the corresponding moves in the middle of the decade (after the last census in 2020 - ed.).

According to a survey conducted by the "Ipsos" According to a Reuters poll, most Americans believe that gerrymandering, a combination of the surname of Massachusetts Governor and US Vice President Elbridge Thomas Gerry (1744-1814) and the word "salamandar," is bad for democracy. Former Democratic President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue this week, supporting the party's California drive as a necessary short-term response to the artificial strengthening of Republican influence in Texas. At the same time, he said that the long-term consequences of gerrymandering are worrisome.