In times of extreme partisanship, like we’re living through today, it is very easy to treat politics and governance like a sporting event. It doesn’t matter how, but winning at any cost is what counts. No, make that, the only thing that counts.

The rule of law falls to the side. Common sense fails to prevail. A good example of winning at all costs is the gerrymandering of congressional districts. Yes, both parties do it when in power, but in the past it wasn’t to the extreme we now see in Republican controlled state legislatures. In today’s divided government, it might mean the difference of winning by a run or two, or losing, to again use the sports comparison.

The Supreme Court recently ruled the state of Alabama had to redraw its congressional district lines because the Supreme Court determined the current map violates the Voting Rights Act. The only problem is the Supreme Court allowed the now disapproved maps to be used for the 2022 elections. What did this mean? Seven districts were drawn in such a way that a black candidate only had a reasonable or good chance to win in one of the seven districts, even though blacks represent roughly 27% of the population.

Fairly drawn congressional district maps would probably have resulted in two black candidates winning with the odds being both of those representatives would have been Democrats.

What’s one congressional seat you ask? Well, there are similar cases in Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and those states will need to redraw their congressional district maps. When you add them all together, we can see that if congressional district maps had been drawn fairly across those states for the 2022 election, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives might only be 218 to 217.

If George Santos resigns or is kicked out of office, there’s a good chance a Democrat will win that special election, and that would’ve meant the Democrats would again control the House of Representatives. Yes, elections have consequences, but not ensuring elections are fair and representative also have consequences. Unfortunately, those are negative consequences.