Letter to the editor: No more gerrymandering, period
· The Washington TimesOPINION:
By tinkering with electoral districts in Virginia and Texas, legislators of both parties seek to select their voters and cut out others.
As Michael McKenna wrote in “The gerrymandering road leads only to violence” (Web, April 27), this corrupt practice threatens democracy’s very existence.
Ecclesiastes might put it this way: There’s a time to go along and a time to correct course. Gerrymandering, two-and-a-half centuries old, has now gotten so out of control that it cries out for reform.
New England, for instance, has no GOP member in the House of Representatives, and only one GOP senator, Susan Collins of Maine. Blue states such as California and Illinois show the same disenfranchisement of their Republican minorities.
Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a long-time icon of the Democratic Party, in 2016 asserted that nothing should interfere with his right to vote against then presidential candidate Donald Trump. In 2024, he deplored weaponized government, saying he would have to vote for Mr. Trump just to oppose it.
On April 26, in an exchange about gerrymanders, Mr. Dershowitz announced that he would follow Democrats Ronald Reagan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others in joining the GOP.
If Mr. Dershowitz’s vote as a Republican is to be respected and protected, we will need a constitutional amendment ending gerrymanders. This might help honorable lifelong Democrats like the foregoing to point their former party toward becoming American again.
JOHN S. MASON JR.
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Irvington, Virginia