O'Brien: Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Decision Likely Lead to "Redistricting War"

Let me just get your reaction to this. This this was a war that was ratcheting up before we got that Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, before we got this news from the Virginia Supreme Court.

Where where do you see things going from here? It does seem like we could see an America where there were no contested districts across these great United States? Well, I think, you know, David, we're in the early innings of what'll probably become a redistricting war.

And, I think we've gotten here because of, the White House's, the Republican party's, and Donald Trump's concerns about how the midterms were taking shape. And it's unfortunate because I don't think politicians of either party want to inhabit a congress in which lines are

routinely redrawn midterm. It one, at a practical level, it distracts all of them from doing the legislative work they go to Washington to do. Secondly, I think it it effectively undermines democracy.

The framers of the constitution didn't envision, districts at all, and and, there's a good reason to have them, especially because they also didn't envision the population of The United States booming and spreading in the way it has. And districts essentially allow the states to be carved up

in a way in which a representative from each state has a manageable district to represent. What's happened now is they become a political football. They used to be withdrawn well, they used to be drawn, you know, every decade after the census was taken.

The second they become a political tool, then the maps become suspect, whichever party is finagling with them. And the the politically correct term for finagled is gerrymander. And and and and so it raises this issue, you know, the the apart from machinery and the machinations around

it is, does it represent a democratic process? Are the voters being heard? Are they being effectively represented? And if they're not, that's a problem. And if districting has and redistricting has become weaponized, then

it it poisons, I think, the the voting process. And I think there's gonna be much more of this in store, and I don't think either party will ultimately be happy with it. That's what I was just gonna ask you is is

this mutually assured destruction? You know, my mother always said two wrongs don't make a right. And for a while, that seems to Mother's Day. It's like yes.

You know, Michelle Obama, when they go low, we go high. But there has been a sea change, and that's due to pressure both from Democratic voters who want to see Democratic lawmakers take action.

But, also, they've they're telling us they feel like they kind of had to do something, but it seems like this could be a short term game for long term damage to both parties and to the political system as a whole.

I I think that's exactly right. The Democrats didn't set this in motion, you know, at least in this the most recent iteration. Trump did. And and for express expressly political reasons.

And and that's poisonous, and I do think it's a threat to democracy. And and even if we come out of this sort of, revisiting this, stepping back, curing some of the the illness that's been bled into the system, I think it's

still damaging. And, you know, the the constitution envisioned trying to resolve this tension between mob rule, majority rule, and and responsible elected officials. And, a lot of those checks and balances in the

Trump era, whether it's the separation of powers at the federal level or how voting occurs at the state level, have all been tossed up and do it in the air in a way that's really very damaging. And I think people who care about the rule of