Editor, Ceres Courier,

Since late August, we have seen a barrage of rationalization from California’s elected leadership, led by our blue-eyed governor. It’s painful to read these pleas, that we should swallow our ethics and return to the gerrymandering we worked so hard to eradicate, because now there is “justification.”

Well, I agree that Texans shouldn’t be gerrymandered into politically manipulated districts - but people, this has been going on nationwide for over a century. It’s not a MAGA-lead partisan scheme, just a regular partisan scheme. California was doing it too until just 15 years ago.

So how is screwing with California voters a “balance” to Texas? So that California can “save our democracy” by further diminishing Republican representation in a state that is already sending far more Democrats to Washington (43 v. 9) than the proportion of 2024 Democrat voters (9.3m v. 6.1m)? I may not agree with the Republicans, but some neighbors do. Wasn’t proportional representation part of Rousseau’s social contract?

Sorry, but giving ourselves an ethics holiday doesn’t work for me. Most everyone I know can see through Trump and his cronies. Countering the Trump B.S. is right: running our own state with honesty and maybe even bi-partisanship — in legal ways — including meeting our own hard-won, voter-driven redistricting law. Even when it tests our better angels to do so.

California doesn’t need to get dirtier just to prove we can be bullies too, pretending it’s “temporary” and “for the greater good,” when it’s a classic partisan power grab.

I don’t need to spit when I speak, and I don’t need Prop 50.

Henry Riggs

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