OPINION:
By tinkering with electoral districts in Virginia and Texas, legislators of both parties seek to select their voters and cut out others.
As Michael McKenna wrote in “The gerrymandering road leads only to violence” (Web, April 27), this corrupt practice threatens democracy’s very existence.
Ecclesiastes might put it this way: There’s a time to go along and a time to correct course. Gerrymandering, 2½ centuries old, has become so out of control that it cries out for reform.
New England, for instance, has no Republican member in the House of Representatives and only one Republican senator, Susan M. Collins of Maine. Blue states such as California and Illinois show the same disenfranchisement of their Republican minorities.
Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a longtime icon of the Democratic Party, asserted in 2016 that nothing should interfere with his right to vote against presidential candidate Donald Trump. In 2024, he deplored weaponized government, saying he would have to vote for Mr. Trump just to oppose it.
On Sunday, in an exchange about gerrymanders, Mr. Dershowitz announced that he would follow Democrats Ronald Reagan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others in joining the Republican Party.
If Mr. Dershowitz’s vote as a Republican is to be respected and protected, then we will need a constitutional amendment ending gerrymanders. This might help honorable lifelong Democrats such as the foregoing to point their former party toward becoming American again.
JOHN S. MASON JR.
Irvington, Virginia
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