Weekly Update: 7/29/2025

Gerrymandering has been in the news this week, raising an important issue for understanding democratic decline. Consider the simplest definition of democracy: a system where parties lose elections. Compare that with the simplest definition of gerrymandering: a system where politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. When gerrymandered voting districts allow one party’s politicians an unfair advantage, that party becomes less likely to lose, and the system becomes less democratic.

In Texas, Republican lawmakers are moving forward with a mid‑cycle plan to redraw congressional districts. This would exacerbate longstanding disparities caused by partisan gerrymandering that have advantaged Republicans. In response, some Democratic leaders in California, New York, and Maryland have endorsed partisan gerrymandering in Democrats' favor to even the playing field.

Partisan gerrymandering happens when voting districts are mapped to help one party win more seats than is fair. The same group of voters can produce very different results depending on how districts are drawn. In a fair map, districts reflect the balance of voters. In a gerrymandered map, lines are twisted to let one party win more seats. This is done through “packing,” concentrating opposing voters in a few districts, and “cracking,” spreading the rest so their votes are diluted. It will make sense if you look at the diagrams below.

Diagram showing how gerrymandering works

In these four diagrams, the first diagram shows a population of 50 squares divided into 20 red and 30 blue squares. The second diagram represents a voting district map made by dividing the population into 5 columns of 10 squares each. The result is 2 red representatives and 3 blue representatives. This would be fair. But if the voting districts are made of horizontal rows, like in the third diagram, the blue squares outvote the red squares 6 to 4 in each row and you end up with all 5 representatives being blue. This represents the complete exclusion of minority voters. And finally, the bizarre shapes in the fourth diagram result in 3 districts where red squares are "packed" so that they outvote the blue squares by 6 to 4 and the 2 districts where the blue squares are "cracked" so that they outvote the red squares by 9 to 1. This represents a minority of the population taking political power away from the majority.

One reason this practice continues is because, under federal law, there is no one to stop it. The US Supreme Court held in Abbot v. Perez, 585 U.S. 579 (2018), that racial gerrymandering can violate the Constitution and be struck down by federal judges, but the next year, the Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019), that partisan gerrymandering was a “political question” and so federal courts would not get involved. In other words, courts will intervene to stop a state from gerrymandering for the intentional purpose of increasing white voting power, but not if the openly stated purpose is to increase Republican voting power, even if the effect is the same. The Supreme Court's decision to prohibit district courts from intervening leaves the issue to the states, where it is always in the interest of the state's majority party to continue gerrymandering in its own favor.

Without federal oversight, the effects are different in different states. States like California and Michigan use independent commissions to create more fair maps. Other states, such as Florida and Illinois, have maps that strongly favor the party in power. The result is a congress where the number of representatives from some states aligns with the popular vote, but in other states, there is a large partisan gap between the voters and the politicians who hold office. The total effect for the whole House of Representatives is 16 congresspersons in Republicans' favor.

That gap has real consequences in today’s House of Representatives. These 16 extra seats in the House helped Republicans win the congressional majority that only narrowly approved the recent budget bill that will dramatically expand the size of ICE and the number of immigration detention facilities. If congressional district maps were fair, the House would likely have been tied or even slightly in favor of Democrats and we would see an entirely different relationship between Congress and Trump. This same disparity will likely shape the next election. If nothing changes in districting, Republicans could keep control of the House even if voters favor Democratic representatives over Republican representatives 53% to 47%.

Even though it gets less attention than election fraud, partisan gerrymandering is a more demonstrable and serious threat to representative government. Put simply, when election outcomes are insulated from voter choices, there is less democracy. The current wave of redistricting battles is a reminder that drawing lines on a map can quietly shift the balance of power and that democratic decline happens in subtle ways as well as dramatic.

Weekly Update Note: Though not addressed in this weekly update, Trump has recently taken executive action on civil commitment and the categorization of federal employees that we will consider in a future weekly update.