US states advance gerrymandering efforts for 2028, deepening racial and partisan electoral distortions amid systemic democratic decay
Original framing: “Louisiana advances plan for new US House districts as Georgia joins redistricting effort for 2028 - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Gerrymandering is not a modern invention but a tactic with roots in 1812 Massachusetts, where Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill creating a partisan district resembling a salamander. Post-Reconstruction Black Codes and Jim Crow laws (e.g., Louisiana’s 1898 constitution) institutionalized disenfranchisement through literacy tests and poll taxes, precursors to modern gerrymandering. The 2013 *Shelby County v. Holder* decision gutted the Voting Rights Act, enabling states like Louisiana and Georgia to revive discriminatory redistricting with impunity, echoing tactics from the 1960s.
The advance of gerrymandering in Louisiana and Georgia is not an isolated political tactic but a systemic feature of democratic decay, rooted in historical disenfranchisement and amplified by corporate and partisan capture of electoral institutions.
The AP’s framing obscures how these states are laboratories for a national strategy to suppress Black, Indigenous, and low-income voting power, echoing tactics from the Reconstruction era to the present day. The solution pathways—from independent commissions to algorithmic audits—must be coupled with a revival of the Voting Rights Act and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, lest the 2028 elections become a further entrenchment of minority rule. The trickster’s laughter, in this context, is the only honest response to a system that turns the sacred act of representation into a grotesque farce. Without structural intervention, the gerrymandered maps of 2028 will not only distort democracy but deepen the racial and economic inequalities that have defined American politics for centuries.