The hypocritical back and forth about Texas’s planned redistricting to get more Republican reps is just silly. As many have pointed out, Illinois, where the protesting Texas Democratic Senators fled, has one of the most blatant gerrymandering in the nation. California, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts have similarly used long-held Democrat majorities in the state legislatures to ensure that Republicans are under-represented. No, two wrongs don’t make a right, but the Donkeys are estopped from pulling a Captain Dreyfus tantrum. They are shocked—shocked!—that Republican majorities would use redistricting to maximize GOP gains in the House.
Come on.
I have never been sure what is the fairest and most democratic way to draw districts. The original controversies arose when Southern states carefully drew districts to split up black neighborhoods. I get it, but I’m also not sure that it benefits the nation or a state to have districts dominated by anti-American, un-assimilated immigrant populations, like the Somali district that gave us Rep. Omar, the Palestinian district that inflicts Rep. Tlaib on Congress, or the district that features the Congresswoman, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), who says she is loyal to Guatamala first, and the U.S. second.
District construction is a zero sum game: if minorities gain more power, it is at the expense of diversity of viewpoints and dissenting voices in other districts. One more thing I am unsure of: whether there is any fair and just way to draw Congressional districts.
I might favor a system that imposes a random grid on a state, and communities and neighborhoods be damned. Have them redrawn before every election.
Ethics Alarms 
Radically increasing the size of the House would be the ethical solution.
Yes. I should have mentioned that.
I’ve always thought that using un changing,natural, geographic boundaries is better than the quadrennial shuffling of the deck
It is amusing that disproportional impact is never uttered by Democrats when the impact favors them.
And this has a LOT to do with why Dems favor Ranked Choice Voting. They know how to exploit it, and they know how to sell it.
JM wrote: “One more thing I am unsure of: whether there is any fair and just way to draw Congressional districts.”
Not sure about a random grid, but I could imagine giving this as a problem to an AI, with the parameters of following existing political boundaries like county lines where possible, with natural geographic boundaries or other existing divisions as a next step (since large cities need to be divided up, use boroughs/neighborhood boundaries first, rivers or interstates next). To help with fairness (and prevent algorithmic subterfuge by corporate controllers), give the same problem to a bunch of DIFFERENT AI engines, and require them to show their work.
That is an experiment I wouldn’t mind seeing the results of.
However, I’m still very skeptical that AI, which is functionally just a bunch of badly nested if-statements, is actually worth a darn. I would worry that people would flood the internet with their preferred gerrymandering and the AI would copy it, getting us the same biased results because of the way these learning algorithms work.
The engineer’s take on this would be that overwhelming characteristic of gerrymandered districts would be that the perimeter is vastly higher than non-gerrymandered districts of the same area. Something as simple as federal a law dictating that the ratio between the total allowable perimeter and the square root of the area of the district would suffice to preclude the ridiculous shapes many gerrymandered districts have.
Redistricting should be done in every state like it’s done here in Iowa. Our state legislature is in charge of the process, but the legislators themselves cannot do the work. Its handled by a non-partisan group that must follow very strict guidelines for boundaries…and no political data of any kind can be used to determine those boundaries. In fact, I think boundaries must be at the county level…as opposed to states like Illinois, where the legislators argue over individual streets.
I don’t know all of the details, but to this point, we do it better than just about anyone else.
…and just before hitting “submit”, I found a link that talks a bit about it.
https://www.ncsl.org/redistricting-and-census/the-iowa-model-for-redistricting
Looks like an excellent system! So the technical problem can be and in this case is elegantly solved; the real challenge is getting something like this installed by politicians who have lost sight of the greater good and seem to work in service first to self and second (if no conflicts detected) for their party. Constituents, citizens, who dat?
There probably isn’t a fair way to district a state, just as there isn’t a fair way to have a method of election where the majority is guaranteed to win (if there’s more than three options). The least worst way to redistrict would be a random redistricting, with either equal area or equal population in each district.
“with either equal area or equal population in each district…”
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Equal population would favor Democrats while equal area would favor Republicans.
Would it, though? The GOP got about 52.5% of the vote for the House in 2024 which, if they got seats proportional to that would have given them close to 230 seats.
The real problem the Democrats have right now is that they have already gerrymandered the heck out of the blue states already. The Massachusetts governor I think was threatening to retaliate — how? Their House delegation is 9-0 Dem already, are they going to steal a seat from Florida? Illinois delegation is 83% Dem, but the GOP got about 45% of the vote in 2024.
So there is very little for the Democrats to retaliate with at this point. What they are afraid of is that the Republicans will do what they have already done — if done across several states, I saw an estimate on a RCP podcast that the GOP could gerrymander another 20 seats, net, after the Democrats retaliate.
It is a stupid fight to pick, in my opinion. Had they not done so, Texas might have done its thing, the GOP picked up 3-5 seats, and that would be it until 2032. But now they’ve got other red states looking at their options, and that is a losing battle for the Democrats.
Of course, PR will be crucial, and propaganda is where the Democrats have had the edge in the past. Some of what they say is even true — it’s really hard to be wrong 100% of the time.
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The other thing that I think the Democrats are concerned about is 2032, when all the states redistrict after the 2030 census. With all the population shifts from blue to red states, New York, California, Illinois are going to be losing seats while Texas, Florida, North Carolina and others will be gaining seats. There’s a trend there.
Just like after 2008, but flipped. The concern is that there will be a permanent shift to the GOP. I’m not sure that is really going to happen — but the Democrats really need to start supporting policies that appeal to more than 25% of the public.
I see no mention of the requirement that the districts are to be close as possible equal in population, such that each elected representative represents the same number of citizens. It would be my guess that this requirement is whats gets the scoundrels to moving lines around so each captures the same number of people. This is easier for those state with relatively symmetrical shapes and an evenly distributed population.
Youtuber CGP Grey has a decent video on gerrymandering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY
which is part of his larger series on voting:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_RN57KWlJKLOc5xdD9_ktRg
Thanks for this!
As the creation of electoral districts is a matter that is decided at state level, there is no feasible political solution. A gerrymandered state that heavily favors one political party would not be willing to harm that party electorally by initiating this process if there is no guarantee that other states will follow suit. This is simply a matter of game theory.
The term gerrymandering is a portmanteau of Gerry and salamander, as Governor Gerry from Massachusetts in 1812 was the first Governor to redraw an electoral map, namely that of Boston. Critics commented that the form of the district resembled a salamander.
I looked at Wikipedia, and my observation is that the only way to get rid of gerrymandering is to get away with districts. The linked Wikipedia page has pictures that show that the distortions will not go away with evenly shaped districts with equal populations. A country like the Netherlands has done precisely that more than a century ago. The entire country is one big district, and votes are prorated to political parties based on all votes in that district. So if there are 15 million votes in a district with 15 representatives, and 8.1 million go to D, and 6.9 go to R, then D will get 8 representatives and R will get 7 representatives. The implication is that a representative represents a political party instead of a local district. This system will only work fairly if it is implemented by federal law for all states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
random grid… that changes every election cycle.