Lessons from the Redistricting Wars

In July 2025, President Trump told a reporter that he wanted the State of Texas to redraw its congressional districts to produce five more seats for his party. It was a clear attempt to influence the outcomes of the 2026 mid-term elections in his favor. While the demand was legal, it did break norms about mid-cycle changes, especially to blatantly aid the party in the White House.

As a member of the Texas legislature told CNN, his co-partisans were willing and able to comply “because we can” and “because it’s good for our party.”

California joined the fray, asking its voters to allow for a temporary redistricting of the state to produce a likely five seats to counter Texas. Republican legislators in North Carolina (one seat), Missouri (one seat), and Ohio (two seats) followed suit. Virginia voters’ approval of a new map added four for the Democrats.

The math on all of the above is a net zero for both parties, based on the hopes of the map-drawers. Of course, the voters will ultimately have a say, and we will see how the plans of the line-drawers go.

However, the war is not yet over, as new fronts have been opened. The Florida legislature passed a new set of maps that could net up to four seats for the GOP. That battle will likely move to the courts, given that the state’s constitution forbids partisan gerrymandering.

Of more long-term significance is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. The Court has substantially restricted, perhaps to the point of eliminating, majority-minority districts intended to ensure Black votes are not diluted via districting. At a bare minimum, this ruling will lead to redistricting in Louisiana, where one such district will be eliminated, and it may threaten the other Democratic district in the state.

More importantly, the ruling Callais will lead to a significant round of changes to maps in advance of the 2028 election, as new weapons have been added to the arsenal of the gerrymanderers.  The degree to which there will be any other changes in advance of 2026 as a result of the ruling remains to be seen.

There are three key lessons I hope are learned here:  lines are more important than people in our system, making changes to the electoral system is possible, and when both sides are threatened, there is hope for more positive change.

First and foremost, all of this should help educate the public that our politics are shaped more by how lines on a map are drawn than by the actual will of the voters. The ability of legislatures to simply decide that, yes, Texas will become plus-five on the GOP side or the dramatic shift in Virginia from a 6:5 ratio to a 10:1 outcome will hopefully open eyes about a core political reality: our system privileges manipulatable lines on the map over actual people.

Every single case of partisan manipulation should make us uncomfortable if we value representative democracy. Put another way: if every voter should be understood to be equal to every other voter, then we should demand a better system. But as long as we rely on districts, they have to be drawn. Worse, most of them are not competitive without any manipulation needed.

Districting is the process of drawing lines on a map to divide a state so that each district contains roughly the same number of inhabitants. This normally happens once every ten years after the constitutionally mandated decennial census. It should be stressed that much of our politics is controlled by such districts. This includes all state legislative seats. This is not just about the US House.

A gerrymander is drawing a district to purposefully aid a specific candidate, party, or group.

The idea of trying to game the system is not new (the term “gerrymander” dates to 1812!). What is new in the last couple of decades is the advent of sophisticated software that allows the easy fine-tuning of districts to enhance the ability of legislatures to manipulate these boundaries. Further, the Supreme Court has determined that partisan gerrymandering is utterly allowable under the law.

While some Democratic states have been advocating for, and often creating, non-partisan commissions to draw their lines (like, ironically, Virginia and California), there has been a substantial amount of movement toward greater partisan gerrymandering on the Republican side (look up, for example, Project REDMAP).

But I need to stress: gerrymandering, as problematic as it is, is not the main problem. The main problem is the usage of single-seat districts as the basis of representing the population in the House. There is no such thing as a set of maps that is fair, competitive, and representative. Gerrymandering is just tweaking a bad system at the margins.

A second lesson is that various state legislatures have demonstrated that, in fact, tinkering with the electoral system is possible. It is noteworthy how much effort was undertaken specifically in California and Virginia. The need to produce ballot measures and launch public campaigns was no small task. Even in Texas, which was a more typical, legislature-based exercise, a special session was still required. In other words, we can, collectively, act on these matters if we have sufficient motivation. Just clearing legislation in the other states demonstrates the truth of the cliché that tells us where there is a will, there is a way.

Those of us who believe that reform is needed are often told that it is just too hard to do. And yes, it is incredibly difficult, and changes that require constitutional amendments may be, for all practical purposes, impossible. But as Democrats look towards possible success in 2026, and as they build towards 2028, they need to be mindful that fighting the current anti-democratic pressures in American politics will require legislative countermeasures. The willingness of politicians across the country to mobilize in this redistricting fight should be taken as a model, or at least a reminder that legislatures can act.

A third lesson is that when both parties can lose, it might create bipartisan pressure for reform. Unlike the Electoral College, where currently the advantage is seen to be enjoyed by the Republicans (see 2000 and 2016), it is hard to muster support to reform an objectively flawed system to elect the president. But this is not the case with redistricting, where both parties are clearly vulnerable. If neither side sees a clear advantage, perhaps some sort of institutional peace accord can be reached.

Further, demonstrating that tying power outcomes to democratic needs is a key to future reform. In other words, motivating politicians to make institutional changes simply because it is abstractly best for democracy is probably insufficient, but they are more likely to act to protect their power. Finding ways to tie partisan power (or, at least, survival) to democratic reform is a must.

The only truly representative system that treats all voters as equal would be some version of proportional representation (for example, I recently published a piece for Protect Democracy that explores what an open-list proportional representation system might look like). If, however, we are going to be stuck with single-seat districts, we need to institute a system that takes seriously that voters inside states have clear partisan preferences and that those preferences deserve to be represented in the Congress of the United States in a way that corresponds to those preferences. The US House of Representatives should, as John Adams stated back in 1776, “be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large.”

The best we could hope for, or at least that I can figure out, is to create a system of independent (as much as that is possible) commissions in each state that would be required to draw districts (at all levels) in a way that tries to reasonably fit the state’s partisan mix. I would suggest that an index could be created based on the state’s presidential and gubernatorial votes for a given ten-year period. This would create an outcome like Virginia had prior to the vote.

This proposal would not be perfect and would be irrelevant to states with one or two seats.  Still, it would be better than what we have. But, at least, under this proposal, partisan gerrymandering would be illegal, thus setting the Supreme Court straight on this issue.

I should underscore that such a system would not give us a lot of competitive seats. But please note that we barely have any now. The Cook Political Report currently (post VA vote) only has 16 seats that are true toss-ups (3.68% of the chamber). If we include leaners the number goes up to 32 (7.36%).

We do not currently have truly competitive elections for the House (PR would change that—new maps won’t!).

Any real drama in November will only be possible if Trump’s approval ratings contribute to a significant blue wave (and if newly drawn districts are not drawn as well as their architects hope!).

Let me leave on this point, which cannot be stressed enough:  it is a fantasy that there is some set of single-seat districts that will create 435 compact, competitive, and representative districts. The way people and their partisan preferences are distributed across space makes this utterly impossible. Expanding the size of the House would help, but not enough.

If we want real competition for power and parties that do a better job representing our interests while also being more responsive to voters (since competitive elections increase accountability), then we need PR. Full stop.

The most fundamental lesson that I hope these political machinations over partisan redistricting is that in the United States, lines on the map are dictating electoral outcomes more than the is the will of the voter.

It is my hope that it becomes deeply understood that this is inherent to our system and not just the result of recent politics.

Featured image is The Gerrymander, by Elkanah Tisdale