The US state of Louisiana has suspended voting in an election due to begin tomorrow in order to redraw districts to elect another Republican member of Congress.
The US state of Louisiana has suspended voting in an election due to begin tomorrow in order to redraw districts to elect another Republican member of Congress.
The primary election for House of Representatives races has been suspended, Secretary of State Nancy Landry announced.
The move comes as the state government looks to redraw the boundaries of the districts to draw a black Democrat out of his seat.
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Trump praised the governor for the move, which will give Republicans an extra seat in Congress.
"Thank you to the Great Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, for his leadership on the very important Callais case, and for moving so quickly to fix the Unconstitutionality of Louisiana's Congressional Maps," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"He has shown tremendous Vision, Strength, and Leadership."
Jeff Landry and Nancy Landry are not related.
In Louisiana, like in many US states, state politicians draw the electoral maps, usually to benefit their own party.
A redrawing of the Louisiana map could make for an all-white delegation in Congress in a state where black voters account for 31 per cent of the population.
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Trump said he was now pushing for a redraw of the map in Tennessee.
"I had a very good conversation with Governor Bill Lee, of Tennessee, this morning, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the Congressional Maps of the Great State of Tennessee," he said.
"This should give us one extra seat, and help Save our Country from the Radical Left Democrats, and their Country destroying Policies of High Tax, Open Borders, Transgender Mutilization (sic), Defunding the Police, ICE, and Border Patrol, No Voter ID, Soft on Crime, and so much more."
The moves come after the US Supreme Court overturned a law which has shaped elections for decades.
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In response to southern states deliberately drawing maps designed to deny black politicians being elected, a 1965 law required districts to be drawn to ensure minority representation.
But much of that law was struck down in a 6-3 decision yesterday.
As a consequence, a series of southern states are redrawing their maps to ensure as few districts as possible have a majority of non-white voters in them.
In Alabama, senior Republicans are today pushing to draw the state's two black representatives out of their seats.
And in Florida, a map was passed yesterday that would deliberately split a heavily Puerto Rican district into several white-majority districts.
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Before the Voting Rights Act, no black person had been elected to Congress for close to a century in the Deep South, despite black people accounting for a majority of the population in many of those states.
In the US south, white voters overwhelmingly vote for Republicans and black voters overwhelmingly back Democrats.
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