Californians were voting Tuesday in a ballot measure likely to further tilt the liberal state towards the Democrats, as the party seeks to neutralize gerrymandering ordered by President Donald Trump.
Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies want voters to approve a temporary re-drawing of electoral districts that could give the Democratic Party five more seats in the scramble for control of the US Congress in next year's midterm elections.
They say they are only doing it to level the playing field after Texas Republicans pushed through their own redistricting -- under White House pressure -- to help maintain a narrow Congressional majority that has so far given Trump carte blanche.
Republicans say it is a naked power grab that will disenfranchise the party's voters in California, a state where they are heavily outnumbered by Democrats.
Unsurprisingly in today's America, one figure looms over the proceedings, with a finger perpetually hovering over the caps lock.
"The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED," Trump wrote on his social media site on Tuesday.
That prompted a now-customary zinger from Newsom, who is staking his claim to Democratic leadership -- and a likely White House shot -- on standing up to Trump.
"The ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE," the governor wrote.
- Gerrymandering -
Electoral districts across the US are traditionally drawn following the national census taken every ten years, theoretically so the electoral map reflects the people who live there.
In reality, most boundaries are party political decisions, so whichever grouping is in power at the time gets to set the rules for the next decade's contests.
California did away with such partisan gerrymandering under former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving the power instead to an independent panel.
But if "Proposition 50" passes on Tuesday, politically drawn boundaries will take effect for all elections until the next census, when the panel will once again determine the maps.
The vote is "a political ink-blot test," Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Barbarak wrote Monday.
"A reasoned attempt to even things out in response to Texas' attempt to nab five more congressional seats. Or a ruthless gambit to drive the California GOP to near-extinction.
"What many California voters see depends on, politically, where they stand."
People at the polls in Los Angeles on Tuesday said the vote was about fighting back against Republican shenanigans elsewhere in the country.
"I'll take anything we can get, anything we can get. We got to sometimes use the methods they're using, whatever will get us moving forward," Casey Mason told AFP.
Makela Yepez said he wasn't particularly pleased that the state's independent boundary commission was taking a temporary back seat, but felt the ends justified the means.
"I think we're using the tools that are at our disposal, and I think we have to have faith that it's going to work," he said.
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