Republicans won the redistricting competition. Don't tell that to this California congressman

(AP) — One thing Anne Smull, a retired feedstore owner, was looking forward to on Election Day was voting for the man who currently represents her in Congress, conservative Rep. That’s because California Democrats sliced Kiley’s district six ways as payback for Republican redistricting in Texas and elsewhere. The chunk of the district that Smull, who identifies as a conservative, lives in is now grafted onto an overwhelmingly Democratic seat based in the state’s wine country.

During a recent lunch at a cafe in Lincoln, a onetime agricultural town that has morphed into a bedroom community on the edge of Sacramento’s exurban sprawl, Smull was heartbroken to hear she can no longer vote for Kiley. “He believes in the same things I do,” Smull said. “It feels sneaky and underhanded.” Republicans started the redistricting competition.

Democrats might finish it Democratic voters in several other states know how Smull feels. President Donald Trump last year told GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps before this year’s midterm elections to increase the number of winnable seats for Republicans in order to help the party hold onto the U.S. The effort was turbocharged by a U.S.

Supreme Court decision this spring that neutralized a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for Republicans to redraw more seats across the South that had elected Black Democrats. Democratic-leaning and heavily minority communities from Texas to Tennessee have been split into multiple congressional districts that dilute the Democratic vote by stretching deep into conservative areas. In the future, it is likely that more Republican voters in other states will go through what Smull and other conservatives in Northern California are facing.

Democrats in Maryland, New York, Illinois and other strongholds have pledged to retaliate in time for the 2028 elections and split Republican-leaning districts the way their California counterparts did Kiley’s. Democrats have been hindered nationally by stricter rules against partisan line-drawing in their states, but California showed a way around that. California Democrats won voter approval last year to redraw the state’s congressional map, originally made by an independent commission, and formed five new Democratic-leaning seats.

‘We have zero voice,’ says voter angry at the Democrat… Now she can't.That's because California Democrats sliced Kiley's district six ways as payback for Republican redistricting in Texas and elsewhere.