(C) Ohio Capital Journal
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Stop the Steal: Politicians cheat voters and destroy democracy with shameless gerrymandering • Ohio Capital Journal [1]
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Date: 2025-08-12
“Stop the Steal!” The mantra, screamed for years by the MAGA base after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and lied about Democrats engineering widespread voter fraud to steal the election, is about to be repurposed.
Expect it to become the rallying cry of voters in Ohio, Texas, Indiana, Missouri, and Florida when they get wise to how their Republican overlords plan to dilute their votes and silence their voices—by preemptively stealing more gerrymandered congressional districts to keep the Republican majority in the U.S. House.
Never mind that some Ohio votes will count more than others when state district maps are designed (again) to produce only Republican wins.
The redistricting maps state GOP lawmakers redraw in 2025, to entrench Republican power in Congress, could well steal the crucial 2026 election before a single vote is cast.
Ironically, the dirty dealer driving this brazen power grab to disenfranchise voters in Republican-led states is the same one who drove another disenfranchising scheme four years ago that culminated in a mob of Trump supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol.
Remember how they roared “Stop the Steal!” as they beat police, smashed windows, defecated in the U.S. Capitol rotunda, and threatened to hang the vice president after he refused to toss certified election results for his boss?
Trump commanded them to “stop the steal” and “fight like hell” because “you don’t concede when there’s theft involved.” He played his followers for chumps to stay in office.
Multiple investigations, audits and legal challenges found zero evidence to support his bogus claims about massive election fraud. Yet Trump still summoned the MAGA faithful to Washington and sicced them on lawmakers gathered to ensure the peaceful transfer of power and honor the will of the American people.
The post-2020 election plot Trump directed to illegally overturn a free and fair election was shameless: False presidential elector slates in seven states. State legislators and state officials pressured to alter vote totals. Georgia’s secretary of state strong-armed (on tape) by Trump to “find 11,870 votes” in order to flip the state — after voters had spoken.
Fortunately, principled Republican leaders (and avowed Trump backers) from targeted states, e.g., Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, pushed back on Trump’s lawless campaign to corrupt the outcome of a legitimate election.
Even under intense coercion from the Trump White House to subvert the choice of the electorate, (as a partisan favor) GOP stalwarts, including former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, refused to go along.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in 2020, “but I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
Back then, pro-Trump Republicans, like Bowers, were compelled to reject what Trump, and his co-conspirators, were peddling because it ran counter to the oath they took to the Constitution.
Their allegiance to the rule of law prevailed over blind adherence to partisan subversion. They chose to protect the integrity of their elections rather than bow to the persistent harassment and intimidation tactics deployed by and for an unprincipled loser unwilling to accept the verdict of American voters.
If only those Republican profiles in courage could be replicated today as Trump again tries to erase the voting power of ordinary citizens to decide who will represent them.
He has mounted another pressure campaign on state GOP officials and legislators to redraw congressional maps in a brazen attempt to throw another election. This time, however, the felon-in-chief — whose attempted coup to stay in office (after his 2020 defeat) led to a horrifying insurrection against his own government — isn’t waiting until after the midterm elections to manipulate outcomes.
He has targeted Republican-ruled states, including Ohio, to jigger the 2026 results in advance — 15 months before voters go to the polls.
Trump, and his craven Ohio understudy JD Vance, are browbeating pliable state Republican lawmakers from Ohio to Florida to guarantee extra GOP seats in the U.S. House as insurance next November.
Statehouse Trumpers who do as they’re told will fall in line, block all checks and balances on the Dear Leader and blunt Democratic congressional pickups in the off-year election by cheating now.
It is unusual, though not unprecedented, for states to redraw voting boundaries in the middle of a decade when redistricting maps are normally done after each decennial census. But it is extremely unusual for the President of the United States to demand it of Republican-ruled states because he feels “entitled” to more Republican congressional districts with pre-selected voters who generate preordained election returns.
Unlike 2020, there is no principled pushback from state Republicans. They are too fearful of crossing their king.
Texas Republicans have the votes to satisfy Trump’s entitlement to a neutralized opposition with five newly gerrymandered districts.
Florida Republicans hope to net a minimum of three new House seats from incumbent Democrats through arbitrary mid-decade redistricting.
Missouri Republicans could add another Republican seat in Congress and Ohio Republicans are eyeing two or three more unconstitutionally gerrymandered congressional districts to appease Trump.
They will rig the ground game to lock in absolute GOP control in districts that disenfranchise whole communities, that undermine voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidates.
Call it grand theft politics to rob voters of their right to self-governance. From the same people who said, “Stop The Steal.”
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[1] Url:
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/08/12/stop-the-steal-politicians-cheat-voters-and-destroy-democracy-with-shameless-gerrymandering/
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