Editor's Note: The following op-ed was written by Open Primaries President John Opdycke and Open Primaries Senior Vice President Jeremy Gruber.
The Texas GOP made two significant moves in the last few months to enhance their chances in the 2026 midterms. The first made national headlines and provoked a Democratic Party response. The second has flown under the radar.
First, the story you know. Governor Abbot and the legislature, acting on instructions from President Trump, conducted a mid-decade gerrymander to increase the likelihood of Republicans gaining more congressional seats in 2026. It’s an outrageous and cynical move, but sadly -- other than the timing of it -- Gerrymandering is the norm in blue states and red.
In 2022, Democrats in the New York legislature tried to implement a gerrymandered map only to have it thrown out in court. Last year President Trump won nearly 44% of the vote in Illinois, but the GOP won only three of seventeen House seats because of surgically gerrymandered maps.
But despite their complicity in the gerrymander wars, the Democrats reacted to Abbott’s move. Presidential hopeful Governor Gavin Newsom insisted that it would “shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” and launched a campaign to temporarily dismantle California’s independent redistricting commission so that the Democratic-controlled legislature could draw new district lines.
Both parties are now scrambling to look at all of their 2026 gerrymandering options.
Here’s the story you don’t know. The Texas GOP has also filed a federal lawsuit seeking to dismantle Texas’ open primary.
It’s arguably a more draconian move than the mid-decade redraw. Texas, like twenty states, does not register voters by party. That means that to implement a closed primary, every Texas voter would have to re-register and declare a party affiliation -- at a time when the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate is “I-don’t-want-to-join-a-party” independents.
Anyone that doesn’t re-register properly would be denied the right to vote in primary elections. Anyone registering as an independent would be shut out permanently. And yet, that’s all collateral damage to the real intent of this gambit: to ensure that only the most partisan Republicans have a voice.
Because despite our deeply held belief that elections are decided in November, the reality is that most races are decided in the primary. In last year’s Texas state legislative races, for example, 97% of races were lopsided affairs that were decided in the primary, not the general election. And that’s the norm across the country.
So why silence from Democrats? Where’s Gavin Newsom when it comes to millions of voters being locked out of participating in publicly funded elections? The sad fact is that the Democratic Party only responds to “assaults on democracy” if and when they affect their power. Red alert -- The mid-decade gerrymander will hurt the Democratic Party! Ho hum - closing the primaries will only hurt the voters.
If this fight was truly about democracy and not raw power for the Democratic Party, they would be standing up for the millions of voters being left out in closed primaries. Not only are they not doing so in Texas, they’ve actively opposed efforts to open the primaries in Arizona, New York City, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota and Washington, D.C.
At a guttural level, the American people know this, which is why they are leaving BOTH parties in droves. 43% of Americans now identify as independent. As journalist Pat Halpin pointed out recently, independents have completely rejected Trump’s agenda. The only organization they trust less than Republicans to move the country forward? The Democratic Party.
And a big reason why they don’t trust the Democrats is because they shielded Joe Biden from scrutiny, cancelled the 2024 primary, and only “stand up for democracy” when it serves their narrow partisan interests. Like in Texas.
The solution demands a lot of us, but it is very American. Don’t be fooled by the echo chambers on either side of the political divide. Drop any pretense that our political leadership will “figure it out” as they’ve done for the last century. Every American -- Republican, Democrat and independent -- must take our citizenship seriously. Stand up and get involved politically. Build citizen-led organizations, initiatives, committees... you name it.
We need to insist that self-government, as Abraham Lincoln articulated, “not disappear from the earth.” Because that’s what truly is at stake.
John Opdycke and Jeremy Gruber are the president and senior vice president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization.