Billie Eilish Backs Newsom's Gerrymander to Disenfranchise Voters

Singer-songwriter Billie Eilish posted a video in support of Proposition 50, the referendum Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is using to gerrymander California’s congressional districts — and to disenfranchise Republicans.

“I am asking for your help,” Eilish said. “If you live in California like me, please, please vote YES on Prop 50 on or before November 4th. It is so unbelievably important and if you need any help voting you can go to http://vote.ca.gov.”

California voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2008 to create an independent redistricting commission that would take the task of drawing districts out of the hands of politicians.

Democrats gamed the system anyway, stripping Republican seats by having political operatives pose as disinterested residents for the purpose of providing evidence to the commission.

However, the resulting maps, in 2010 and 2020, at least left some conservative or competitive districts in the state. Republicans currently hold nine seats out of a total of 52 — about 17% of the whole, which is roughly half the share of the actual Republican vote (about 40%) in the state.

Newsom’s map could eliminate four or five of those seats, knocking Republican representation below 10%. Effectively, Prop 50 disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of California voters — at a cost of $251 million for running the special election.

His goal is to counteract the effect of Texas redrawing its districts to eliminate several “majority-minority” districts that the Department of Justice says were impermissibly drawn after the last Census by relying on race.

The 2020 Census also disadvantaged conservative states and helped liberal states, resulting in a lopsided map in favor of Democrats nationwide. Republicans hold the House by a narrow margin; Newsom hopes to help Democrats’ prospects of retaking it, thereby staking a claim to national leadership in the party.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.