The Redistricting Lie Landing in Your Mailbox

Billionaire money, stolen quotes, and a flood of deceit. The only defense is your yes vote.

Californians are finding glossy, alarmist mailers in their mailboxes warning of a “power grab” by Sacramento politicians. The language is bold and urgent. The fonts scream of a democracy under siege. They invoke fairness, transparency, and even cite groups like the League of Women Voters to lend credibility. On the surface, these messages appear to be a defense of democratic values.

But peel back the ink and a different picture emerges. Behind the rhetoric is a familiar playbook, one that has been used across the country to distort representation. The fingerprints belong not to grassroots defenders of democracy, but to Republican billionaires and operatives who are pouring money into a misinformation campaign. Their goal is simple: preserve their own political advantage while accusing others of the very crime they themselves are committing.

These mailers are not just pieces of political advertising. They are artifacts of a larger strategy, a carefully engineered narrative designed to confuse voters and redirect outrage. To understand the weight of what is landing in mailboxes today, we must first return to 2010, when California voters made a historic choice to take redistricting power away from politicians and place it in the hands of an independent commission. That reform reshaped the political landscape, and it is precisely that legacy which is under attack now.

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The Context - California’s Redistricting Legacy

California has long been a testing ground for democracy’s experiments. In 2010, the state’s voters took a bold step that set it apart from the rest of the nation. They approved the Voters FIRST Act, which created an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. The Commission was tasked with a responsibility that had, for decades, been wielded as a weapon by politicians: drawing congressional and legislative district maps.

By shifting that power away from the legislature and into the hands of an independent body, California sought to break the cycle of backroom deals and self-serving lines carved across neighborhoods. The reform was significant because it did more than just redraw maps. It restored a measure of trust in the process. Communities that had been fractured or silenced by partisan cartography finally saw districts that reflected their people instead of their politicians.

The Commission became a model nationally. Experts and advocates pointed to it as proof that transparency and fairness were possible in the age of hyper-partisan redistricting. The result of this reform was not abstract. It meant that women and people of color, often marginalized under old systems of map manipulation, found themselves elected to office in higher numbers. The Commission proved that when the drawing of districts is insulated from partisan gamesmanship, the democratic system breathes easier.

This legacy is alive in the present. The fight over maps is not just about borders on paper. It is about the allocation of power, the direction of resources, and the amplification or silencing of entire communities. That is why, when Governor Gavin Newsom recently signaled that California might revisit its maps after watching Republican-controlled states like Texas ram through new redistricting schemes, it triggered alarms for the GOP.

The moment he opened the possibility of a new mapping process, the terrain shifted. What followed was not a sober discussion of fairness but a flood of glossy mailers screaming about power grabs, constitutional threats, and the supposed dismantling of democracy. All while the very people funding these missives were republican billionaires who love it when republicans themselves gerrymander…because it is in THEIR favor.

The Mailers - “Protect Fair Elections” or Protect GOP Power?

The mailers that have flooded into California homes carry a striking consistency. The colors are patriotic, the fonts oversized, the tone urgent. They claim that Sacramento politicians are staging a dangerous power grab. They warn of corruption, secrecy, and the collapse of democratic safeguards. They repeat phrases about fairness and accountability, as if rehearsing a creed designed to sound unimpeachable.

One mailer declares, “Gerrymandering is wrong no matter who does it.” Another insists that reforms put in place over a decade ago are under threat from scheming Democrats. To bolster their argument, the designers of these pamphlets include quotes from respected organizations like the League of Women Voters. At first glance, these references seem to validate the alarm. But the reality is far different. The groups cited have since made clear that their words were taken out of context and used in ways that distort their true positions.

“The mailer wrongly implies that the League of Women Voters of California endorses the information… The League did not authorize this action.”

-The League of Women Voters of California

The strategy here is not new. It relies on creating confusion. By borrowing the language of reform and wrapping it in the imagery of nonpartisan integrity, the mailers attempt to convince voters that those crying foul are the true defenders of democracy. In truth, the entire campaign is engineered to disguise the actual partisan interests behind it.

This tactic is a sleight of hand. While the Republican Party has aggressively pushed racial and partisan gerrymanders in states like Texas, Louisiana, and Utah, these California mailers accuse Democrats of plotting the very abuse Republicans are perfecting elsewhere. It is a mirror turned backward, reflecting not reality but an inversion designed to manipulate perception.

The danger lies in the subtlety of the approach. For voters who do not follow redistricting battles closely, the mailers seem like common sense warnings. Who wouldn’t oppose politicians rigging maps for their own advantage? But the omission of who is actually funding these warnings, and what they stand to gain, is where the deceit becomes clear. Behind the loud declarations of fairness sits a partisan engine, one intent on preserving its grip while cloaking itself in the language of reform.

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Follow the Money - Republican Funding Behind the Curtain

The trail of money behind these mailers tells the story their words try to hide. On the return addresses and fine print, the organizations claim noble names: Protect Voters First, Right Path California, and campaigns that insist they are about safeguarding elections. Yet when you trace the funding, the illusion unravels.

At the center of this operation is Charles Munger Jr., the Palo Alto physicist and Republican mega-donor who has poured more than ten million dollars into stopping Governor Newsom’s redistricting proposal. Munger has a long history of deploying his wealth to influence California’s ballot measures, but this campaign is one of his most aggressive. By bankrolling Protect Voters First, he has ensured that the voice booming through mail slots across the state is not that of ordinary citizens, but of a billionaire intent on shaping California’s future to his design.

Alongside Munger’s money stands the machinery of Right Path California, tied to Republican leadership at the national level. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has reportedly stepped into this fight, leveraging his network to raise as much as one hundred million dollars to crush the redistricting measure before it can gain traction. The scale of this war chest reveals the stakes: Republicans see California’s experiment with independent redistricting not as a local curiosity, but as a direct threat to the partisan advantages they rely on elsewhere.

These are not grassroots organizations worried about fairness. They are well-financed vehicles created to confuse voters and protect a party that has mastered the art of gerrymandering in other states. The irony is thick. While their mailers rail against “politicians drawing maps to serve themselves,” the very people funding these attacks are the ones who depend on that abuse of power for survival.

In the end, the money exposes the truth. This is not about protecting democracy. It is about protecting Republican power. The wealthy donors and operatives behind these mailers know that if California’s model of 2025 redistricting spreads to other blue states, it threatens to dismantle the fortress of gerrymanders that has kept them in power across the country. Their investment is not in fairness but in fear, not in the Constitution but in control

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Munger…

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Deception in Print – Misleading the Public

The most striking feature of these mailers is not the money behind them but the precision of their deceit. Every word, every borrowed phrase, every patriotic color scheme is designed to invert the truth. This is deliberate narrative engineering. The end goal is not to win hearts with a positive vision, but to overwhelm with confusion until distrust becomes the default state.

Even the visual design carries weight. Red, white, and blue banners drape the pages. Bold headlines declare threats to democracy. The presentation mirrors nonpartisan voter guides, making the material appear official. It is not simply about delivering information. It is about creating a mood, a psychological effect that leads readers to doubt reforms they might otherwise support.

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And while the words shout about a supposed Democratic power grab, the silence is deafening about what Republicans are doing elsewhere. In Texas, Louisiana, Utah and beyond, Republican-controlled legislatures are drawing maps that fracture communities of color and weaken their voting strength. That reality is absent from these mailers, erased as if it never existed. The omission is itself an act of deceit, one that allows the pamphlets to present Republicans as protectors rather than perpetrators.

The evil genius of the deception is that it does not need to persuade completely. It only needs to create hesitation, a seed of doubt that causes a voter to question the reforms they once trusted. That doubt, once planted, is enough to tilt the balance. This is manipulation through distortion, misattribution, and omission. It is the weaponization of doubt.

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The National Picture - Gerrymandering as a GOP Weapon

What is happening in California cannot be separated from the national war over representation. Gerrymandering has become one of the most reliable tools for Republican power, a strategy sharpened to a blade over the past decade. The story of these California mailers is not unique. It is part of a larger architecture designed to entrench control while cloaking that control in the language of democracy.

In 2010, Republicans launched the REDMAP project, a nationwide campaign to win control of state legislatures in time for the redistricting cycle. The strategy was ruthless in its simplicity. By capturing statehouses, they gained the power to redraw districts in ways that locked in Republican majorities even when Democrats earned more overall votes. The results were immediate and devastating. Across states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio, Republicans secured congressional and legislative majorities disproportionate to their actual share of the electorate.

At the same time, they pursued racial gerrymanders with surgical precision. Communities of color were packed tightly into as few districts as possible, diluting their influence elsewhere, or cracked apart so their voices were scattered and weakened. These maneuvers determined who controlled legislatures, which laws passed, and whose voices were silenced.

The courts briefly acted as a check. In cases like Shaw v. Reno and Bush v. Vera, the Supreme Court ruled that racial gerrymanders violated constitutional protections. But in 2019, with Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court declared that partisan gerrymandering was beyond the reach of federal courts. This ruling left states free to manipulate districts for partisan gain, so long as race was not the explicit driving factor. In practice, this opened the door for maps that favored Republicans under the guise of partisanship rather than race.

California’s independent commission stood as a direct rebuke to this trend. It proved that fair maps were possible, and that democracy could function without partisan manipulation. Now they are ready to turn it back on the Republicans to try and save Democracy during this existential moment. That is precisely why Republicans are now investing so heavily to discredit and dismantle it.

These California mailers are echoes of a national strategy that has been years in the making. They represent the exportation of a weaponized tactic honed in other states, now tailored to fracture California’s trust in its own reforms. The fight here is not only about California’s districts. It is about whether the nation’s most populous state will serve as a shield against gerrymandering or not. Because even in the face of democratic collapse the option to gerrymander California is being left…to the people. Put to a vote. Which is not something the red sates can even come close to claiming.

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Chaos Recognized, Chaos Answered

These mailers are signals of a coordinated attempt to rewrite the story of democracy. They dress themselves in patriotic colors, they borrow the voices of civic organizations, they scream about fairness while hiding their financiers. But when you strip away the gloss, you find the truth: this is not about protecting voters, it is about protecting Republican power.

This moment demands clarity. The chaos created by these ‘written propos’ is a tactic. But chaos can be more than destruction. Chaos is also the fertile ground of creation, the spark that ignites transformation. Recognizing the deception for what it is gives us the power to resist it. Naming the money, calling out the manipulation, and refusing to be confused by glossy distractions is how Californians defend not just their maps but their sovereignty.

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Do Not Be Fooled

California, the fight in your mailbox is not about fairness, it is about fear. The billionaires and operatives funding these high gloss lies are not here to protect democracy, they are here to protect themselves. They hope you will be so confused, so weary, that you will stay home or vote against your own sovereignty. Do not give them that victory.

In 2010, you proved that the people of this state could rise above partisanship and build a commission that put fairness first. The spirit of fairness has mutated and we must evolve together as well. Every vote cast in favor of new redistricting against the republicans is a strike against manipulation, a refusal to be silenced, a declaration that communities matter more than partisan lines.

So when you see those mailers, remember who sent them. Remember who profits from your silence. Then walk into the voting booth and carry forward the legacy you built. Vote yes to defend California’s maps, yes to defend your community, Vote yes to redistrict California in November.

A share this information with everyone you know. Disarm them with education.

Stay Stellar-

Grey Galaxie

Your resident Chaos Witch & Astrological Alchemist

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