Anthony Zurcher

Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Washington bureau. And it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, D.C.

hyödyntää demokraattista ja luoda lisää asioita heille. Miksi he tekevät sitä, Anthony? Se alkaa siltä, mitä Donald Trump yhden vuoden aikana yritti tehdä ja teki Texasissa. Hän kertoi republikaanista valtion hallituksista uudistaa maat siellä, jotta republikaatit saavat lisää asioita Texasin puolustusjärjestölle.

Täytyy muistaa, että Yhdysvaltojen puolustus on nyt tasapainoissakin. Yhdysvaltojen puolustus on nyt tasapainoissakin. Yhdysvaltojen puolustus on nyt tasapainoissakin. Yhdysvaltojen puolustus on nyt tasapainoissakin. Yhdysvaltojen puolustus on nyt tasapainoissakin.

ja alkoi vahvistaa republikaanista valtioita löytämään tavoja antaa republikaanilta enemmän paikkoja puolustusjärjestelmällä tämän novemberin alkuperäisissä valmistuksissa. Missouri oli toinen, North Carolina oli kolmas, aloitti tämän järjestelmän, ja ehkä ei todellakaan ajatellut seuraavista seurauksista, jotka olivat, että demokraattiset demokratiaalikotuotantoissa

started doing exactly the same thing and i think we talked about it before it started in california with governor gavin newsom bringing a ballot measure in that state to redraw the maps to shift about four seats over from republicans to likely democratic and now the most recent example was in virginia where it was an arduous process they had to

win control of the state governorship and the legislature last year. They had to vote on having a ballot referendum that was today last year, vote on it again this year, and then that put it on the ballot yesterday when Virginians, the state I live in, headed to the polls and by about a 3% margin agreed to redraw these lines, which will shift about four seats from Republicans to Democrats. There are 11 House seats in Virginia.

Most predictions are that Democrats will now win ten of them. They had six as of right now.

is carving up the state in order to give your party majorities, sometimes modest majorities, in as many of these districts as possible, because you could have one district with 70% Democrats in it, and then a bunch of other districts with 40% Democrats in it. They would win the 71, they would lose the 41s to Republicans, but if you drew the lines to move some of those in the 70% district,

into all of the other districts and put them all slightly maybe 53 54 democrats then you are because people tend to at this point vote pretty reliably for their their party uh you could give your party a lot more of a chance of winning in each of these states and you talk about it it's it sounds like cheating it sounds like rigging the game uh yes uh but there is a long tradition of this going back

hundreds of years. The term gerrymandering actually comes from an editorial cartoon in a Massachusetts newspaper from the 19th century. This is something that is not unusual. Actually, interestingly enough, there has been a push to take the line drawing out of the hands of politicians, where it traditionally has been, and put them in independent commissions that are supposed to look at drawing lines that are fair, that kind of encapsulate different regions or different cities in the same place.

Ongelma oli, että tämä vahvistus oli yleensä vahvistettu liberaaleihin ryhmiin, demokraatien ryhmiin, ja ne olivat valtioita, jotka olivat vahvistuneita demokraatien ryhmiin, jotka olivat itse asiassa päässeet näihin asioihin. Eli valtioita kuten Virginia, jotka muutamia vuosia sitten olivat valitseet valtuutettavuuden, jotka olivat valitseet valtuutettavuuden. Kalifornia oli toinen. Nämä valtioita...

change their maps to make them a little more balanced, giving Republicans an advantage. And then when Donald Trump did this with Texas in the middle of the decade, as you point out, it was the Democratic states that looked back and said, well, we are going to scrap this kind of hopeful, idealistic view of how to draw these lines and go and go straight back to purely partisan, squeeze as much advantage as we can.

It's actually the district I now live in with these new maps. It starts in Arlington, which is just across the river from Washington, D.C., and stretches out into the hinterland in kind of north central Virginia. And it has two different prongs that kind of stretch out and reach around. And so it's been called the Lobster District because it kind of looks like a crustacean with two claws. And with a very, very long tail as well, going into Virginia, too.

vaikuttavat heille, kun he yrittävät tunnistaa heidät poliittisemmin virtaiseksi? En tiedä. Mielestäni he ovat tulleet tuntemaan, että poliittinen virtaisyys ei ole elinkeinoa. Muistatko Michelle Obamaa vuonna 2016 sanoen, että kun he mennään vähemmän, me menemme laajemmaksi? Luulen, että monet demokraattiset tuntevat, että se oli naivaa. Ja oikeastaan Hakeem Jeffreys, joka on demokraattinen jäsen, joka on puhunut puheenjohtajana,

Se on mielenkiintoista, ja se, mitä demokraattiset kertovat, on se, että sekä Kaliforniassa että Virginiaassa nämä olivat valintareferenssejä. Nämä olivat ihmiset, jotka valitsivat muuttaa maat. Teksassa se oli hallituksessa, joka teki sen. Hallituksessa, joka valitsi ihmisiä Teksassa, mutta se oli vielä yksi asia, joka ei ollut demokraattisen ääntä. Sama on Missouriissä. Se oli hallituksessa. Ja itse asiassa demokraattiset Missouriissä ovat yrittäneet vahvistaa valintareferenssiä muuttaa maat.

back to one that would give Democrats one more seat. And the same with Ohio, same with North Carolina. It was legislatures doing it. So is it an absolutely done deal in Virginia? These are the districts people will vote in? Not quite yet. The Republicans have challenged this in court. And after last night's vote, the head of the Republican Party and

Virginia said now we're going to go to litigation about the process on that. The state supreme court, which had kind of punted on this issue, is going to weigh in, but it seems likely that this is going to stick. There were court challenges to the Texas maps, to the California maps as well, and all of those ultimately lost. So it seems like this is going to be the lay of the land now, and actually there are candidates who are already running for these new districts, who announced even before this ballot measure passed that they were going to be running

To be a constitutional lawyer in America now must just be a license to print money. That's what we should be doing, not this. Yeah, it never has been a bad time to be a lawyer in the United States, but this is particularly for people who do election law, the golden age. And speaking of court cases, there also is a big looming Supreme Court case out there on the Voting Rights Act and challenging whether the requirement by that act that race be taken into account when

suunnittelemaan ratkaisuja, jotta voidaan yrittää varmistaa rauhallinen, melkein samanlaista rauhallinen representointi ja kongressiallinen järjestelmä valtion kautta, onko se järjestelmällinen tai ei. Järjestelmä voisi tehtävänsä seurata ja sanoa, että se on ilmaista, että se ei ole järjestelmällinen. Ja se voisi antaa valtioihin mennä takaisin ja poistaa paljon näitä suurimmat ja suurimmat alueet.

that were drawn with this law in mind, minority districts that are by and large in the south at least, democratic held, and that could throw all of this back into a big mess and could by some predictions lead to about 15 to 17 democratic seats getting washed away and flipped to the republicans. But even if they decide that soon, well they are going to decide that soon, we know that, we just don't know exactly what day, that probably won't come in in time to affect these midterms.