Democrats need to vote smarter. That means becoming Republicans | Column

The biggest story in this upcoming midterm election will not be Iran, inflation, or immigration. Rather, it will be the unprecedented redistricting, already underway in places like California and Texas, that was further unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Callais v. Louisiana Voting Rights Act decision.

States across the South that previously had to create special congressional districts in which non-white voters — almost uniformly Democrats — could elect their candidate of choice are now free to pass new maps that will likely boost Republican fortunes even more.

Most prominently, Tennessee recently parceled out sections of the single, majority-Black Memphis-centered district into three Republican-leaning districts, which conservatives hope will give their party a 9-0 congressional sweep in the state.

Similar efforts have either passed or are being considered in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, among others. All told, Republicans expect to net around 10 seats at minimum from redistricting.

The number would be much lower, possibly even tilt in Democrats’ favor thanks to California’s efforts, but for Callais. The decision is that important.

So far, Democrats and proponents of minority representation have raised in response a lot of sound and fury, but ultimately words and lawsuits will signify nothing in the face of binding Supreme Court precedent.

“Vote harder,” i.e., keep doing what they’ve been doing electorally, won’t get them anywhere, either.

There is a four-step strategy to “vote smarter” that would force states to again create majority-minority districts — all perfectly within the law set down in Callais:

First, minority voters need to register en masse as Republicans.

Second, minority candidates need to run in Republican primaries.

Third, minority voters need to vote together for minority candidates in Republican primaries.

Fourth — and this is perhaps the most difficult step — minority voters need to support the winners of Republican primaries in general elections up and down the ballot, from president to dogcatcher.

Sounds weird, right? Join the party perceived to be against minority voters’ interests to vindicate minority voters’ interests? That can’t be right.

Except it’s exactly what minority voters did in the 1960s to trigger the Voting Rights Act in the first place. They joined explicitly racist southern Democratic Parties, voted for pro-civil rights candidates in the primaries, and then either supported or did not seriously oppose segregationist Democrats in the general election. Even if they opposed a racist candidate, minority voters did so under the auspices of the Democratic Party.

In 2026 minority voters need to do the same, except as Republicans this time.

Here’s how the strategy works:

The Supreme Court says it’s OK for redistricters to discriminate based on partisanship. As they did in California, Democrats can legally dilute the value of Republican votes and vice versa.

In the South, it means that (mostly) white Republicans can dilute largely minority Democratic votes — see Memphis, Baton Rouge, Charleston, etc. — and claim that they’re disempowering Democrats, not minorities.

But, if those minorities were Republicans, even liberal Republicans, then Republican redistricters would lose their partisan justification for disempowering them. All that’s left would be to draw districts to dilute minority influence, which is unconstitutional under Callais.

Of course, the strategy means that Republicans will win overwhelmingly in states across the South at every level of government. Guess what? They already do. And they will continue to win big despite the millions of dollars thrown at lawsuits and “vote harder.”

If anything, those approaches lock in the ideological and racial polarization in which minorities always lose.

“Vote smarter,” though, is cheap and effective in the long term.

There’s no individual monetary cost to change voters’ registration and habits.

After one or two election cycles, the facts necessary to make a Voting Rights Act claim will be apparent. Republicans will then need to either 1) redistrict favorably to minorities to avoid the Voting Rights Act problem or 2) admit they just don’t want minorities to have power.

The second option fortunately works out equally well for minorities as the first. Both enhance minority voting power, either through the legislature (option 1) or the courts (option 2).

If all that’s not enough, also recall what the mass movement of minority voters into the Democratic Party did: It significantly liberalized the party and forced segregationists to “evolve” on civil rights. There’s no reason why it couldn’t work on Republicans 60 years later. And that might be the biggest win for minority voters who “vote smarter.”

James Sieja is an associate professor of political science at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.