1. United States
2. Mass.
3. Letter

Freed of the restraints of the Civil Rights Movement at last, Republicans are canceling elections and defying state constitutions to redraw congressional maps in time for November. And this is just the latest in a long line of aggressive, norm-destroying efforts to gerrymander their way to one-party rule. Democrats must acknowledge this new political reality and be just as forceful in rebalancing power, doing whatever it takes to redistrict areas under their control as soon as possible. We are risking having the political field permanently tilted against us by the GOP’s attempted steal if we don’t respond in kind. The old rules are dead. We are handing easy victories to anti-democratic forces if we insist on continuing to play by them. It would be a mistake it could take decades to recover from, because we will have relinquished the means to fight back. This is obviously not a course of action we relish taking. There is a reason the Democratic Party and good government advocates has been pushing for redistricting reform – this sort of winner-takes-all politics is unrepresentative and serves to silence our voices when we’re already struggling to be heard in a dysfunctional system. Ultimately, we will need structural changes to our elections, starting with a requirement for independent, non-partisan redistricting. But that will require broad buy-in, and it is clear we will not be able to build consensus across the aisle to fix what’s broken as long as Republicans believe it’s working to their advantage. This is our way of ensuring they have an incentive to help us change direction. The Republican Party is committing to political arson. We need to fight fire with fire. We are calling on our elected officials to do whatever is necessary to secure new congressional maps that take back some of the power that is being seized. Where political or process obstacles arise, put in the work to find ways around them.