Texas has once again become the epicentre of America’s recurring struggle over electoral fairness. The state’s newly approved Congressional map, engineered to carve out several Republican-leaning districts, is not just about drawing lines on a page. It is about the balance of power in Washington, the meaning of representation, and the health of democracy itself. Redistricting, by law, occurs every decade after the census.

In practice, it has become a high-stakes political game. Legislatures controlled by one party routinely manipulate district boundaries to secure long-term electoral advantages, a tactic now so normalised that it is often treated as routine politics rather than democratic distortion. The Texas case, however, shows how far that practice can stretch, transforming cartography into an instrument of exclusion. Supporters of the new map insist that the changes simply reflect population shifts........

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