Should we fight fire with fire? That is the question that over ten million California voters recently asked themselves, one that Democrats have brought up again and again following the second election of President Donald Trump to his current office. Recently, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded with a definitive yes. California’s Proposition 50, proposed by Newsom, passed on November 4, 2025, in a special ballot election; it enables a new, legislature-drawn voting map to take effect until 2030 — one heavily beneficial to Democratic candidates.
Gerrymandering, or the practice of drawing electoral district lines to favor a certain group, is nothing new. In fact, it has been taking place since America’s beginnings, when the politician Patrick Henry attempted to ensure James Madison’s defeat in an election by changing the boundaries of his district. What makes Proposition 50 different is its blatancy. This ballot measure is a direct response to Texas redrawing its district lines, at Trump’s request, to give Republicans five more seats in the House of Representatives. “They’re not screwing around,” said Newsom in a press conference, “We cannot afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.”
In advertisements for Proposition 50, words and phrases appearing again and again were “fight,” “stop him,” and “long-term,” each focused on framing the new maps as a way for voters to fight back against some of the president’s unpopular policies. And clearly, it worked. An estimated 64.6% of voters supported Proposition 50, but to many, it seems like a step in the wrong direction. Most states have district maps drawn by the legislature, but California is one of only ten states to have an independent redistricting commission—a committee of citizens spanning party lines who decide on fair district lines. The rationale for this is to prevent gerrymandering and promote competitive races, and overall, it seems to have worked. Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project, which ranks the partisan fairness of district maps, rated California as “better than average with some bias.” (The same algorithm gave the new maps an “F”). Even temporarily overwriting the authority of this commission seems to undermine it completely: if a partisan vote can overturn maps generally accepted as fair, the commission may soon become a formality. The new district maps will take effect in 2026, but the debate is still ongoing, a debate that is relevant to us all: In a world where, to many, the government seems to threaten the very foundations of democracy, to what degree are we willing to fight fire with fire?