Every now and then, politicians allow themselves to be so dazzled by the opportunity to make their opponents look bad that they unintentionally reveal the unsightly details behind the curtain. Little kids often make the same mistake — like the siblings fighting for the cookie with all the chocolate chips, who then suddenly realize that the cop (Mom) now knows that they’ve both had their hands in the forbidden cookie jar.

Today’s example is gerrymandering, and the Democrats who raised all the fuss have just been caught with chocolate all over their fingers.

Last week’s news reports were abuzz with tales of 30 Texas Democrat state legislators who skipped town to avoid a redistricting vote that would, once approved by the GOP majority (a sure thing), give the GOP perhaps an additional five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The ensuing made-for-TV melodrama was replete with hand-wringing over the Texas GOP’s blatant attempt to “steal” extra House seats just in time for the midterm elections, anguish about yet another supposed assault on American democracy, and boatloads of nonsensical but incendiary political rhetoric.

Ignore that part. The important aspect of this latest political flap is that it shines a bright light on the true nature and consequences of the political maneuver with the wonky name “gerrymandering” (those of a certain age may remember it from our seventh-grade civics class). It’s a bad thing — an insidious way for the party in power in any state to saddle its minority opponents with substantially less congressional representation than their numbers warrant.

In other words, it is an inherently anti-democratic practice.

Moreover, gerrymandering is pervasive in American politics and has been for generations. Both political parties are avid practitioners, but until the current flap about the Texas redistricting plans, the practice has spurred only fleeting public interest.

Who knew that in all of New England, there are no Republican congressional representatives? Not one. Over 15 million Americans reside in New England. Yes, the region is heavily Democrat — but if one-third (a very reasonable estimate) lean Republican, that’s five million Americans with zero representation in the U.S. Congress. That stinks.

Interestingly, it is the Democrat leadership in states that are the grand champions of gerrymandering — Illinois, New York, and California — who are raising the biggest uproar about the Texas matter. Reportedly, many of the AWOL Texas legislators took sanctuary in Illinois and New York. Governors of both states hail the Texas renegades as heroes and express outrage at the dastardly Texas Republicans who drove them away. New York Governor Kathy Huchal calls the GOP redistricting initiative an “insurrection” (an easy term to throw around these days).

But New York and Illinois are long-term poster children for extreme gerrymandering. Only seven of New York’s 26 congressional representatives are Republican, while Illinois fields only three Republicans among its 17 congressional representatives. In both cases, they severely under-represent their states’ Republican-leaning citizens. And of course, the grand prize for hypocrisy goes to California, which holds a whopping 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, of whom only seven are Republican. So much for their concerns about democracy.

The other critical factor in the gerrymandering arena is the U.S. Census. The 435 seats in the House are allocated to states in proportion to their population; America’s growing and very mobile citizenry routinely dictates adjustments to that allocation.

Census-taking in the U.S. is normally a once-every-10-year process. The Trump administration has challenged the 2020 census, taken during the COVID pandemic, due to known counting errors and disagreement with the census’s disregard for the legal status of resident immigrants. On that basis, the president recently called for a new and more accurate census to properly allocate congressional seats.

We’ll hear more about that, but for now, the accepted practice (although not driven by law) is for states to “redistrict” every 10 years, after the census. Whether the AWOL Texas legislators return home of their own accord or they’re dragged back in chains, the GOP majority in Texas will ultimately win their fight to redistrict, and thus pick up five seats in the House, upping their edge by a few percentage points.

The apoplectic Democrats’ major beef with the Texas GOP is that you’re only supposed to stack the deck once every 10 years, and Republicans are scheming to stack it in mid-decade. How undemocratic of them!

When it happens, Republicans will be thrilled to see their guys finally up their gerrymandering game to Democrat standards. Maybe that’s better than taking no action, but I don’t see it that way. If we Americans truly believe in Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” we should make sure that we mean ALL the people, not just the politically agile ones. Congress should act to rein in gerrymandering, once and for all.