California voters have temporarily suspended their state’s admirable anti-gerrymandering law in order to gerrymander a more Democratic-leaning U.S. House delegation. The Golden State’s passage Tuesday of Proposition 50 is the epitome of anti-reform, a step backward — but a necessary one, thanks to President Donald Trump and his allies in Missouri and elsewhere.

The thoroughly predictable gerrymandering arms race that Trump and his allies first sparked in Jefferson City, Austin and other red-state capitals earlier this year is now in full conflagration.

While gerrymandering every 10 years is commonplace within both parties, doing it again mid-decade for no reason but immediate political gain was unheard of until now. It demonstrates how this president’s poisonous contempt for political norms has not only infected his own party, but has forced the opposition to respond in kind. That’s bad for everyone and for democracy itself.

States must redraw their congressional district boundaries every 10 years with each new census to ensure they are equal in population. It provides a once-per-decade opportunity for each state’s ruling party to thumb the scales for electoral advantage. It’s a rotten bipartisan tradition that’s almost as old as the nation itself.

This is why Democratic-controlled Illinois, for example, has a 14-3 Democratic advantage in its House delegation, when 11-6 would more accurately reflect the state’s partisan makeup, as indicated in statewide election results.

Similarly, Republican-controlled Missouri’s delegation is 6-2 in favor of Republicans, even though the state’s Democratic proportion, as indicated in statewide elections, should put it closer to 5-3.

You’d think that goosed-up advantage would be enough for Missouri’s ruling Republicans. And indeed, it seemed to be, until Trump came calling.

“We do redistricting every 10 years. We’ve already done that,” Missouri House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins told the Missouri Independent back in July — seemingly shrugging off White House pressure to re-gerrymander the state this year to help Republicans win an extra House seat in next year’s midterms.

“To do it again (mid-decade),” Perkins said back then, “would be out of character with the way Missouri operates.”

If only.

As Texas and other red states moved ahead with their own Trump-ordered re-gerrymandering schemes, Missouri ultimately followed suit. Gov. Mike Kehoe called a special session in September in order to promote, as he ridiculously put it, “Missouri values.” Do those include voter disenfranchisement?

The Legislature’s GOP supermajority obediently redrew the districts to make it likely the Kansas City-area seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver will go Republican next year. That would leave St. Louis’ 1st District as the only Democratic seat in the state’s eight-member House delegation. (A ballot initiative effort is underway to block Missouri’s redistricting scheme. More information is available at peoplenotpoliticiansmo.org.)

Texas and North Carolina this year have approved similar re-gerrymandering schemes on Trump’s orders. Other Republican-led states, including Indiana, Ohio and Florida, are in the process of joining this corrupt cavalcade.

As this page has argued for years, gerrymandering — even the “normal” kind that has long flourished in both parties before Trump set out to make it worse — has always been anathema to democracy. Voters are supposed to choose their politicians, not vice versa.

The tragedy is that the best solution is one California had previously enacted, but has suspended with Tuesday’s vote. California voters in 2010 took the redistricting process out of the politicians’ hands and put a nonpartisan commission in charge. By most accounts, it has worked well.

Tuesday’s vote suspends that reform and simultaneously approves a new House district map that will likely mean five additional Democratic seats in California’s 52-seat delegation, currently divided 43-9 in favor of Democrats. That would match the five additional Republican seats that Texas’ recent re-gerrymandering is expected to create.

Illinois, Virginia and other blue states are considering their own re-gerrymandering schemes in response to the growing list of red states that are considering it. This is how arms races happen. Left unchecked, it isn’t hard to imagine this becoming the new normal: that instead of playing gerrymandering politics every 10 years, both parties will start doing it every two years, before every midterm.

The silver lining in California’s Proposition 50 is that it sunsets in 2030. After that, the state reverts to the process it previously used — the process every state should use — of a nonpartisan redistricting commission.

But for now, California and other blue states are right to fight fire with fire. The unacceptable alternative is to passively allow Trump to continue warping electoral democracy to his own ends of power.

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