OP-ED: Gerrymandering for partisan purposes should be outlawed
The Republicans who control the Texas state legislature have taken the unusual step of redrawing the congressional district maps in between censuses because Donald Trump wanted to pick up five additional Republican seats in the House.
The Republicans have a slim majority in the House, and the mid-decade gerrymander is an attempt to make it easier to hold that majority. The proposed gerrymander gives white voters control of 73% of the congressional districts in Texas, even though they only make up 40% of the population.
In 2019, when the Supreme Court considered the issue of gerrymandering for partisan advantage, 22 Democratic attorneys general urged them to end it. Ten Republicans, including the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, defended the practice. The Roberts Court ruled that the issue was “nonjusticiable.” Roberts essentially argued that this was a political matter to be solved by the legislative bodies, even though gerrymandering skews the make-up of the legislative bodies making the decisions; it’s unrealistic to expect the politicians to change the system that benefits them.
Even in states that don’t gerrymander, congressional seats may not be divided between parties in proportion to the vote statewide, because voters are not randomly distributed, and how voters are clustered can make a representative process difficult. For example, Trump won about 36% of the vote in Massachusetts, but the congressional delegation is 9-0 in favor of the Democrats. In a study in which districts were drawn randomly 5,000 times, only three drew a map with a Republican district, and even then, it was only by a tenth of a point.
In Wisconsin, on the other hand, Democrats won over 50% of the vote, but the Republicans dominate the congressional delegation 6-2. The problem for Wisconsin Democrats is that most of their voters are clustered in either Madison or Milwaukee, so randomly drawn maps that keep municipal boundaries intact will condemn the Democrats to only winning 2 seats.
Both Wisconsin and Massachusetts could be made more “fair” so that the delegation better represented the relative power of the parties in the state, which would make the system more competitive, but that would take manipulating the maps to create that result. It would also be possible to draw districts to be as competitive as possible, which would have the beneficial effect of making elected officials work to get votes.
One of the biggest problems with partisan gerrymandering is that since the results of each district are preordained in the general election, the competitive races are in the primaries. Since primaries are low turnout elections, the voters who do turn out tend to be the most energized partisans on each side. They tend to vote for the most radical partisans and punish representatives who work with their political opponents or who hold moderate views. This is a major factor in political polarization.
If the districts were as competitive as possible, that might lead to “wave” elections where one party wins decisively, even while winning most districts by very small margins. This would amplify their political power and allow them to get more done (since their majority in Congress would be larger). While it would get rid of the deadlock that close elections create under our current system, I’m not sure it would be better for a party that wins 51% of the vote to have huge majorities in Congress, because they would be able to enact more radical programs that might lead to electoral reversals in the next election (and it’s probably worse for the government to radically change direction every two years than to have trouble getting things done).
In response to the Texas gerrymander, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed his state to gerrymander for the Democrats, changing the system that reformers had put in place in 2008, which created the California Citizens Redistricting Commission to create more competitive districts. This is not good government, but unfortunately, it’s probably good politics. If Democrats don’t gerrymander their states, and Republicans do, Republicans enhance their control of the federal government far beyond their electoral power.
Republicans are planning to gerrymander other red states: Ohio, Missouri and Florida, growing their legislative majority. The most obvious move for the Democrats is to gerrymander New York, but in 2014, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that outlawed drawing districts “discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.” Democrats cannot change that in time for the 2026 mid-terms, even if voters approved.
The main problem for the Democrats is because Democratic voters are more concentrated, gerrymandering disproportionately rewards Republicans. As David Daley says, since Democrats have been generally pushing for neutral maps as a good government reform, to reverse course now is “throwing away a decade of messaging on a war they can’t win.”
Democracy thrives on politicians competing for votes. Currently, only 37 out of 435 congressional districts are competitive (within 5%). So 398 districts are incentivized to appeal to the extremes in their base and are punished for cooperating with the other side.
If a California gerrymander can limit the damage caused by the Texas gerrymander, it may be worth doing. If it allows Republicans to gerrymander a lot of other states, it will hurt both the Democrats and the country.
It is important to remember that the Texas gerrymander was not inspired by Texas voters, but rather by Texas politicians (primarily Gov. Greg Abbott) doing Trump’s bidding. That’s not democracy expressing the will of the people, but rather a president fearing mid-term losses manipulating democracy to retain his undeserved power.
Gerrymandering for partisan purposes should be outlawed at the federal level to avoid punishing states who outlaw it on their own. Democracy works best when it accurately reflects the will of the people, not when politicians game the system to stay in power.
Kent James, of East Washington, has a doctorate in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.