Stroll: Trump will be gone in 2029, but gerrymandering will be here to stay

I’ve been canvassing in downtown San Jose against Proposition 50. People who are for it counter my pitch as either: “You have to fight fire with fire” or “It’s only until 2030, and then we’re back to a fair system of congressional districting.”

No one I know actually likes getting rid of an independent commission in favor of the state’s 43 House Democrats picking their voters and ensuring they won’t face serious opposition in ultra-safe seats. This will make congressional elections throughout California a mere formality, and everyone knows it.

Any fair-minded person realizes that if Prop. 50 passes and its desired goals are reached, the 55% of Californians who are non-Democrats will enjoy, at best, about 8% representation in the state’s congressional delegation, while the 45% who are Democrats will enjoy at least 92%.

So I argue that if they vote for it, it’s like an American soldier’s reported justification of a slaughter during the Vietnam War: “We had to destroy the town in order to save it.”

But the furor against President Trump and congressional Republicans in my liberal neighborhood makes this is an unwinnable argument. People are willing to sacrifice their own and other Californians’ interests if it has any chance of slowing the Trump administration.

I’ve been able to persuade people, however, with this argument: Proposition 50 promises to end gerrymandering in 2030, but we’ll be stuck with it forever. Elections will become mere formalities, and it won’t be different in result from losing them altogether through the coup d’état or civil war that extreme pessimists keep predicting.

Here’s why I believe gerrymandering will become permanent:

1. We’ll have continued population loss, both absolutely and relative to fast-growing states like Texas and Florida. That will cost several seats. Los Angeles County alone may have lost about 450,000 people since 2020.
2. It’s likely that the Supreme Court will agree with the Trump administration that illegal immigrants may not be counted for reapportionment purposes. We have about 2.3 million illegal immigrants in the state. If they’re not counted in 2030, that will cost several more seats.

So it’s foreseeable that we’ll lose many House seats in 2030. For incumbents, who will be almost entirely Democrats thanks to Prop. 50, it will become a desperate game of musical chairs. I believe incumbents will exert overwhelming pressure to get voters to ratify gerrymandering permanently in 2030, spending huge amounts of money so those remaining seats go overwhelmingly or entirely to Democrats.

How many times have proponents argued that a California tax increase will be temporary? And how many times has it become permanent? The question answers itself. I know of only one time a temporary increase turned out to be temporary: a statewide 0.25% sales and use tax that expired in 2016. Aside from that, you know the drill. The same will happen with gerrymandering.

Vote No on Prop. 50. The Trump administration will be history early in 2029. But you may be stuck with a 90-year-old Democratic congressmember in 2050 whom you’ve long tired of. Is it worth it?