Amid the increasingly high-stakes battle over redistricting, Vice President JD Vance is calling for red states to counter what he calls “aggressive” Democratic gerrymandering in blue states like California, New York and Illinois.
At the center of this push is a contentious debate over fairness, representation and the role of illegal immigration in congressional apportionment — an issue Vance argues is tipping the scales unfairly in favor of the Democratic Party.
“The democratic system in this country is broken because who you vote for doesn’t necessarily get reflected in who your representatives are,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
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“We’re just trying to rebalance the scales and frankly push back against a very unfair system created by the Democrats.”
The nationwide conversation surrounding gerrymandering has reached a boiling point as Texas Republicans eye a map redraw that inspired state Democratic officials to flee to blue states in protest.
At the same time, blue state officials have floated similar ideas to counterbalance the potential effects of a Texas redraw, which some reports suggest could hand the GOP five additional seats in the Lone Star State.
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Vance said Democrats have had the upper hand in the game for many years and, under President Donald Trump’s leadership, Republicans are finally playing offense.
“It’s ridiculously unfair,” he said of illegal immigrants being included in the total population used to determine how many seats each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The only real way to fight back against it is for us to redistrict, in some ways, as aggressively as these hard blue states have done,” he added.
Vance alleged that, by including illegal immigrants in the total population count, blue states like California receive an unfairly large number of congressional seats, effectively siphoning representation away from red states in the process.
With redistricting battles likely to intensify, Vance’s comments reflect a growing appetite within the GOP to redraw maps in their favor, even as critics warn that such tactics could deepen partisan divides and trigger new calls for gerrymandering in blue states.
Vance isn’t concerned about Democrats gerrymandering further, however.
“There’s just not a whole lot of juice left out of that lemon,” he said. “The Democrats have already gone as far as they possibly can.”