Dirty tricks have become so much a part of American politics that it is surprising that Democratic-governed states at least, since that party is the more original and aggressive in such matters, have any Republican congressmen at all. This is something that the rather absurd, super-annuated beach-boy governor of the failed state of California, Gavin Newsom, is aiming to put right in that state. He thinks it will enhance his chances for the presidential nomination of his party in 2028.

It is illustrative of how low political ethics have sunk that an experienced politician like Mr. Newsom thinks it will raise his popularity and stature in seeking the nation’s highest office to bring the disreputable practice of gerrymandering to such an extreme in the nation’s most populous state.

Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814, his surname is pronounced with a hard G) was one of America’s Founders and one of those who insisted on a Bill of Rights before he would sign the Constitution. He was the fifth vice president and, as governor of Massachusetts, he approved a congressional electoral district that was allegedly shaped like a salamander to produce a desired result in an upcoming election. Like many pioneers, even of undistinguished activities, he would be astounded at the length to which the practice that carries his name has been taken. Mr. Newsom might note that Gerry was defeated in seeking re-election as governor. 

It is ironic that the left-wing Democrats’ clamor for the abolition of the Electoral College because it occasionally happens that a president is elected with fewer total votes than his opponent and most states award all their electoral votes to the leading candidate no matter how close the election in that state. It is inconsistent to suggest that the president always be the candidate with the most votes, but under their redistricting proposals the House of Representatives could easily be dominated by a party with substantially fewer votes in congressional elections than its opponent.   

Presidents John Quincy Adams (1824), Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), Kennedy (in 1960, when votes cast in Alabama for Senator Harry Byrd are attributed to him and not Kennedy), along with George W. Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) in their first presidential elections, received fewer votes than their chief opponents, usually because of extraordinarily wide margins for the losing candidates in some specific large states. 

It is impractical to take innumerable individual House of Representatives redistricting boundaries all the way to the Supreme Court. If the political community cannot cure itself of its addiction to play childish games with congressional election boundaries, the Constitution should be amended to apportion the number of congressional districts to each state according to their populations and the parties would run slates of candidates in statewide elections, and award the parties a percentage of congressmen from each state as close as possible to their percentage of the popular vote for Congress in that state. 

Some formula would have to be devised to determine what area of the state was being represented by which congressmen. But there would be many ways to do this, including drawing lots, working on the boundaries of counties and the place of residence of the elected congressmen, and simple negotiation.

This would be a radical revision of the concept of representation and the role of legislators’ interaction with constituents could be partially transferred to local councils as a first step. But the slate system of election works reasonably well in Israel and some other countries, and local councils and governments take on more of the task of representing individuals and communities. 

Matters really should not proceed as they are now with an accelerating drive to oppress local and statewide electoral minorities, even where they represent up to 49 percent of voters, nor is it appropriate to redistrict constantly between the decennial censuses and the allocation of the right to vote in any election or to be factored into the calculation of congressional and Electoral College delegations should be withheld from the many millions of people who have entered the United States illegally.

The Democrats are conducting their final defense against Mr. Trump and his agenda by a comprehensive program of judge-shopping and having reliable Obama- and Biden-appointed federal district judges profess to disqualify the president’s initiatives. The Supreme Court mercifully restrained the ability of district judges to injunct the president of the United States throughout the country. 

Yet this tactic of a party that controls neither the executive or the legislative branch trying to drive the work of government into the hands of partisan lower court judges, and to rely on clogging the docket of the higher courts to try to stifle and frustrate the governing party’ ability to govern, is reprehensible and ultimately could be dangerous. 

The United States is notorious for allowing an immense amount of litigation that other mature jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, would consider frivolous and vexatious, and it may have to adopt slightly stricter standards of recourse to the court for strictly partisan reasons. Obviously, such measures must be handled with extreme care as access to the justice system is an absolutely fundamental right. Even fundamental rights can be diminished and weakened by abuse of the process.