Protecting Representative Form of Government

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILEY of California. Madam Speaker, I rise today because democracy is under assault in my home State. California politicians, led by the Governor, are throwing a grenade at our Constitution in order to strip power from voters and seize it for themselves. This fraud on our electorate compels action by Congress to protect the representative form of government that citizens of every State are due.

That is why today I am calling for a prompt vote on H. Res. 4889.

On three separate occasions, California voters have deliberately chosen to remove politicians from the process of drawing the lines for legislative districts. Voters have empowered an independent citizens redistricting commission to set the boundaries of representation so that free and fair elections, not political manipulation, are the motive force in our democracy.

This principle is so important and so vital to safeguarding democracy that the citizens commission is enshrined in our State constitution along with a number of principles to guide redistricting:

Redistricting occurs once per decade after the Census.

The legislature is barred from participating.

The members of the citizens commission may not run for public office.

Districts are to be drawn in an open process based on extensive public input.

Boundaries are to be set based on neutral criteria like keeping communities together.

District lines cannot be influenced by partisan considerations or drawn to favor or disfavor any incumbent or candidate.

In one fell swoop, Gavin Newsom is blowing up all of these constitutional principles. His unprecedented mid-decade gerrymander tears up the map created by our citizens commission, replacing it with one drawn behind closed doors and adopted by politicians. It is one designed with explicitly partisan goals and zero public input. It is one that tears communities apart while doing special favors to Sacramento insiders.

Do the voters want this? Do Californians want to overturn everything they had previously voted for? Emphatically they do not.

Polling shows that two-thirds of voters, an overwhelming majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, favor keeping the commission. This would seem to be a problem for Governor Newsom, as his plan to push the commission aside requires voter approval.

To overcome this problem, to produce an artifact of voter approval for a proposition our voters strongly oppose, the Governor has resorted to two strategies: disenfranchising voters and defrauding them.

First, the Governor has called a sudden, impromptu, off-year, low- turnout special election, asking a partial electorate to overturn the will of our full electorate. To further suppress voter participation, he has thrown election rules out the window in a hyper-accelerated timeline unlike anything our State has ever seen, meaning fewer polling places, fewer notifications to voters, and at least at first a digital- only voter guide.

Second, the Governor is committing outright fraud on the ballot itself, describing the proposition in terms designed to fool voters into thinking ``yes'' is ``no'' and ``no'' is ``yes.''

To justify all of this, to clothe naked political self-interest in some kind of principle, the Governor and his enablers have treated us to one absurd paradox after another. We are told that another State is doing something so bad and so sinister that we should do it too. We are told that banishing an independent redistricting commission somehow supports independent redistricting. We are told that we should fight fire with fire, even if that means the whole world burns.

This perversion of Federal elections simply cannot be tolerated by the United States Congress. We have a duty to protect the rights of voters in selecting their Representatives in this body, and we have the authority to do so under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Pursuant to that authority, I have introduced H. Res. 4889 to protect the congressional map drawn by California's citizens commission and to preserve the map of every State until the next Census.

This measure has bipartisan support. It will prevent a chaotic redistricting war from breaking out across America. It will allow us to focus on the real issues facing our country.

Today, I am calling on Speaker Mike Johnson to bring this measure to a vote on the House floor.

Gerrymandering is a plague on our democracy wherever it occurs. That is why I have also called for a bipartisan commission to end the practice once and for all.

While almost everyone agrees political division has become a serious problem in this country, it is especially harmful when we can't agree on the basic rules of the road. We need to find common ground when it comes to the basic parameters for our politics. We can then disagree vigorously within those parameters on matters of policy and our vision for the country. That is what democracy is about.

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