Former Attorney General Eric Holder warned on Monday that the United States is "slipping into" a "political apartheid system" because conservatives have greater influence than their numbers would suggest.
During an interview with Washington Post Live, Holder said he was concerned that gerrymandering allows politicians to pick their voters instead of voters making the choice.
"We are in danger of slipping into what I would call a political apartheid system, where a minority of the people in this country will have disproportionate amounts of power," Holder said, "and be able to put in place things that are not supported by the majority."
The former attorney general pointed to the expected loss of abortion rights as one example.
"The minority [of voters] will be represented by the majority that was put on the Supreme Court by two presidents who did not win the majority of the vote because of our Electoral College," Holder explained. "[Conservative justices] will have the ability to foist on the nation a policy with regards to reproductive rights that is not supported by the people of this country."
"A whole range of things where the American people are essentially together," he added. "And yet, we don't see our laws, our regulations, our policies reflected of what in a lot of places is consensus on the part of the American people."
The infamous apartheid policy of South Africa was used to give the country's white minority power over its non-white minority. The policy was denounced by countries around the world and was eventually overturned in the 1990s.
