Ohio Is the New Texas — And That Should Scare Us All

Texas has always been framed as “different.” Big, brash, and bold in its politics. But here’s the truth: Texas wasn’t just being Texas. It was testing a political operating system. From gerrymandering maps that look like spilled ink, to book bans, to voter suppression dressed up as “integrity,” Texas became the beta site for authoritarian democracy.

And now? Ohio is the upgrade.

If Texas was iOS 1.0, Ohio is iOS 2.0. And if we let Project 2025 take root, we’ll be staring down the full operating system install — a redesigned America that locks millions of us out of power permanently.

Maps Are Code

Think about it: redistricting is political UX design. The lines on a map aren’t neutral; they’re code that determines how we experience power. The map decides who gets a voice and who gets muted. Who wins before the first vote is even cast.

In Texas, the maps were written to ensure a shrinking white minority could maintain permanent majority control. In Ohio, the “upgrade” is cleaner, sharper, more efficient. The state legislature is turning maps into an exclusionary firewall — one that blocks out Black communities, young voters, and cities driving the future economy.

This isn’t dysfunction. It’s design.

Authoritarianism Needs Beta Testing

Every system rollout starts somewhere. Tech companies test in controlled environments before scaling. Political authoritarians do the same.

• Texas was the prototype: chaotic, messy, and deeply harmful.
• Ohio is the franchise rollout: less obvious, but more lethal, because it looks “normal” to outsiders.
• Project 2025 is the national install: the moment the operating system fully replaces democracy’s messy but open-source code with something sleek, controlled, and unremovable.

Authoritarianism doesn’t march in boots anymore; it creeps in through user agreements. By the time you realize what you’ve signed, the system has already updated overnight.

Why Ohio Matters Now

Ohio sits at the intersection of old industry and new possibility. Ohio is the only state constitutionally required to redraw congressional maps in 2025 — despite voters siding with having fair maps in 2015 and 2018. Our majority-minority cities surrounded by suburbs and rural towns tell two different stories of America. It’s a place where the future can still be built — or rigged out of reach.

What happens in Ohio won’t stay in Ohio. Just like Texas exported its blueprint, Ohio will export its maps, its laws, and its tactics.

California as the Open-Source Counterweight

But here’s the thing: systems don’t just evolve in one direction. If Texas and Ohio are showing us the closed-source authoritarian model, California is experimenting with an open-source democracy.

Governor Gavin Newsom has been stress-testing a different OS:

• Expanding rights: enshrining abortion access and reproductive rights in the state constitution.
• Protecting the vote: building infrastructure to safeguard access while other states dismantle it.
• Creating sanctuary: making California a haven where rights under attack elsewhere can still be defended and modeled.

This is more than “blue state policy.” It’s a counter-code — a system that resists authoritarian installs by showing the country what inclusive design looks like in practice.

Texas and Ohio are running closed systems built to lock people out. California is experimenting with open-source democracy designed to bring people in. The real fight is not just left vs. right; it’s which operating system America will upgrade to.

Fighting Back Means Rewriting the Code

The good news? Systems can be hacked. Firewalls can be broken. Maps can be challenged. But it takes more than playing defense.

We have to:

• Expose the design — call redistricting what it really is: political coding for minority rule.
• Build new infrastructure — not just react to maps, but design new systems of community power that can’t be erased with a pen stroke.
• Link arms across states — what starts in Texas, scales in Ohio, and spreads everywhere. Our resistance has to scale, too.

Because if we don’t, the next time the system updates, we may find ourselves locked out for good.

Here’s the real headline: Ohio isn’t a swing state. It’s a signal state. A signal of what’s to come if we don’t rewrite the code — and a signal that California’s counter-code might just be the firewall we need.

This post was originally published to Word In Black on August 22, 2025.