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On Sunday night’s episode of his HBO show, John Oliver focused on the fight over redistricting that has been “raging” across the US as the midterms approach later this year.

In Texas, Republicans currently hold 25 out of 38 congressional seats and proposed redistricting could see that number rise to 30. California has voted in favor of Proposition 50, redrawing districts in a way that could cost Republicans five seats next year, while redistricting is also set to happen in Missouri and Louisiana.

“This is the only comedy show on TV you feel like you should have studied more for,” joked Oliver.

“It’s been predicted that, thanks to this latest batch of redistricting alone, Republicans could gain between three and 12 more seats in Congress than they would have otherwise done,” said Oliver. “Which is significant, because the last election gave them just a five-seat majority.”

Many of the fights center on breaking up majority-black districts, with chaos in Tennessee after a law passed to dissolve the state’s only such district.

“Burning a printout of the Confederate flag is a pretty powerful response there,” Oliver said, reacting to footage of one protester. “It effectively communicates two things: one, that we won’t stand for our rights being stripped away; and two, I’m mad enough to put up with some pretty weird looks from a Staples employee when we printed this out.”

The “practice of manipulating maps to get the outcome you want is known as gerrymandering, and it has been a problem in the US for centuries,” pointed out the host, calling redistricting a way of “putting a heavy thumb on the scale of who gets elected”.

“In many states, the way we draw districts is deeply flawed,” he went on. Last summer, Donald Trump told the media that he wanted five more Republican seats in Texas, and the state governor, Greg Abbott, swiftly signed a new congressional map that would give the party exactly that number.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with plans to redraw the state’s map that would give Democrats five more seats, essentially offsetting Texas’s bump to Republican seats.

While Newsom’s proposal passed easily, “by the time that happened, more red states had already entered the fray,” with Missouri and North Carolina redistricting in a way that increased Republican seats.

Virginia then countered with an aggressive proposal that would give Democrats 10 seats and just one to Republicans. Locals started selling “Texas Started It” bumper stickers, but the proposal was overruled by the Virginia supreme court on technicalities.

In April this year, the US supreme court came to a historic decision to limit the Voting Rights Act, ending protections for minority voters in seven states and making many majority-black districts vulnerable to being erased.

After a group of 12 self-identified “non African American voters” claimed that the Louisiana map injured their “personal dignity”, the state’s governor put measures in place to redraw the map, eliminating one of two majority-black districts.

“So right now, only one of the state’s six districts is majority black, despite the fact that its population is around one-third black,” said Oliver.

“History shows that without majority-black districts, black candidates in Louisiana basically have no chance of being elected,” he added.

Soon after, Tennessee approved a new map that split the majority-black city of Memphis into three districts, while Florida passed a map that could add three to four Republican seats.

All told, Republicans stand to gain up to 12 House seats in November, making the “margin for Democrats meaningfully smaller”, said Oliver. “In the coming years, Republicans in southern states could ultimately eliminate majority-minority districts altogether, taking America back to the Jim Crow era, where there were no black representatives in southern states with majority-black populations.

“For those who fought so hard for their voting rights, watching them get stripped away this fast is brutal. It is worth remembering: the progress that’s currently being undone happened in living memory for many.”

Oliver ended his monologue by looking to the possibility of reform. “A new voting rights law isn’t going to mean much if the supreme court just steps in to undo it,” he said. “This is why we need significant supreme court reform.

“There’s actually a House bill that would be a start there, providing each president equal opportunities to appoint justices by establishing staggered 18-year term limits to the court.”