America S Gerrymandering Crisis And Why It Matters Now

Leo Migdal

-Oct 28, 2025, 1:36 PM

america s gerrymandering crisis and why it matters now

Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to NationalWorld, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you. To many Europeans, the United States still carries the image of a nation where elections are free and fair, where the will of the people is the deciding force in politics. The reality is more complicated. In America, there is a centuries-old practice that lets politicians quietly tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast: gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, named for Elbridge Gerry, originally written as “Gerry-mander,” first appeared on March 26, 1812, in the Boston Gazette — a reaction to the redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts while Gerry was... It is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to benefit a party, an incumbent, or a political group.

The tactic takes two main forms: packing voters of one persuasion into as few districts as possible, or cracking them into many districts so they can’t form a majority anywhere. Either way, the outcome is the same — elections that are decided in the drawing rooms of state legislatures rather than at the ballot box. This year, the issue has come to a head again, with high-profile fights in Texas and South Carolina, and a national political climate in which both major parties are willing to use the tactic... But what makes this moment different is former President Donald Trump’s open disregard for democratic norms and traditions. His influence over Republican-controlled legislatures has encouraged breaking with long-standing practices if it means fewer Democrats in the House of Representatives. It is another symptom of a toxic trend in American politics — the centralization of power in national party leaders at the expense of local accountability.

The genius behind the American system has always been its focus on localism. Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” That ethos is fading fast. The Trump political movement is putting a nail in that coffin, prioritizing national party advantage over community representation. The redistricting push in Texas is just the latest example of this dangerous shift. A push to reshape congressional voting districts, instigated by President Donald Trump, is sweeping across states as political parties vie for an edge in next year's elections. Trump is hoping to buck historical trends of the president’s party losing seats in midterm elections.

Republican state officials have responded to his call by redrawing House districts to give the GOP a better chance of winning more seats. Democrats have countered with their own gerrymandering efforts. Stream NBC4 newscasts for free right here, right now. Each House seat could be crucial because Democrats need to gain just three seats to take control of the chamber from Republicans and impede Trump's agenda. The unusual mid-decade redistricting has resulted, so far, in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more seats that Democrats think they can win, putting the GOP up by three. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states, and there’s no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.

America is quickly moving toward a system in which tens of millions of blue-state Republicans and red-state Democrats effectively have no congressional representation at all. If anyone has a reason to oppose gerrymandering, it’s U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa. For the past 12 years, LaMalfa, a Republican, has represented California’s First Congressional District, a sprawling, mostly rural expanse in the northeast corner of the state. But thanks to Proposition 50—California’s counter to Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas—LaMalfa’s home will soon lie in a new district that reaches from the Nevada border all the way to the affluent wine country... Another successor district will connect the remote Oregon-California-Nevada vertex to the suburbs of San Francisco, an eight-hour drive away.

It will be shaped almost exactly like the 19th-century political cartoon that coined the term Gerry-Mander. LaMalfa can still run for Congress next year, taking his pick of either of those two new districts. This gives him the option of losing to a Democrat by perhaps 30 percentage points, based on last year’s results and current polling, or merely by about 15. Either way, he’s toast. “It’s a real dirty scheme,” LaMalfa told me. So what does LaMalfa think Congress should do about gerrymandering?

Nothing. “I don’t support the federal government trying to dictate to every state individually how they do things,” he said. Most Republicans seem to agree—even the ones who, like LaMalfa, are losing their seat as the redistricting wars heat up. This is unfortunate, because at this point, the only effective solution to partisan gerrymandering would be federal legislation. All of the other factors that once constrained the practice are fast disappearing. Although nearly 6 million registered Republicans live in California, very little prevents the state from drawing a map that has no Republican seats at all—just as very little is stopping Republican-led states from drawing...

(Under Prop 50, California will go from 11 districts that voted for Donald Trump to five.) America is quickly moving toward a system in which tens of millions of blue-state Republicans and red-state Democrats... After President Trump sparked congressional redistricting fights in Texas, California and Missouri, some advocacy groups are pivoting their strategies against partisan gerrymandering. President Trump has sparked redistricting fights in Texas, California and other states which could reshape the congressional election map. That has lead to some longtime opponents of gerrymandering reconsidering their strategies against the redrawing of voting districts to help a particular political party win. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports. UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #1: Ready for some more chants?

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: In 2019, Common Cause took their campaign against partisan gerrymandering all the way to the Supreme Court. UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Gerrymandering's got to go. Hey, hey... Carl Unegbu Lawyer and Vice Chair of the ACS New York Chapter

Thanks to the actions of Texas Republicans, America has been plunged into a tit-for-tat redistricting faceoff that is oddly occurring in the midcycle period as politicians angle for advantage ahead of next year’s midterms. First, Texas Republicans at the urging of President Donald Trump himself have proceeded to redraw their state’s electoral map in a clear maneuver to grab an additional five congressional seats come November 2026. In response, and in a bid to also grab five additional seats for their side, California Democrats have finalized arrangements to launch their own effort in November via a ballot initiative to counteract the... The broader political context of these moves is quite noteworthy: the Republican majority in the House being razor thin and the midterm elections being traditionally unfavorable affairs for the party in power, the Republicans’... Given this scenario, the countermeasures undertaken by the Democrats was not only foreseeable but rather inevitable. For them to do otherwise would have amounted to what some groups like Common Cause have termed “unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation and people-powered democracy." (This...

Nationwide, both parties are gearing up to confront each other in what promises to be a race to the bottom redistricting contest. These midcycle maneuvers, initiated by the Republicans, clearly seem to defy the normal practice under which redistricting exercises are conducted every ten years in accordance with the census cycle established in Article I Section... In simple terms, what the two parties are doing here is known as “gerrymandering,” a notorious maneuver in which electoral maps are intentionally drawn to give an advantage to one side, usually the side... More specifically, what we are seeing in Texas and California, the country’s two most populous states, is a species of gerrymandering behavior known as “partisan gerrymandering” (based on party); the other kind is known... Gerrymandering alters who controls elections by reshaping district lines to concentrate or dilute voters’ power; states this year have passed—and courts have blocked—maps that judges found to be racial gerrymanders and partisan redraws are... The legal landscape matters: the Supreme Court’s recent posture on partisan claims (Rucho) and the pending Callais/Calais litigation over Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could sharply constrain federal remedies for maps that...

1. How gerrymandering works: the mechanics that change votes into seats Gerrymanders operate by “packing” opposition voters into a few districts and “cracking” them across many others so their ballots win few seats even when they make up a large share of the electorate; mapmakers... The practical effect is that a party can turn a modest edge in votes into a much larger edge in seats—or neutralize a regional demographic shift—by drawing district lines to squeeze competitive districts into... 2. Racial vs.

partisan gerrymandering: different legal rules, different consequences Federal courts still treat racial gerrymanders differently from partisan ones. Racially drawn maps that dilute minority voting strength violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and have produced court-ordered remedies; by contrast, the Supreme Court in Rucho took partisan gerrymandering claims largely off... That split matters: litigation to block maps is feasible for racial claims but far harder on pure partisan fairness grounds at the federal level [3] [6]. Updated September 25, 2025 at 6:29 PM CDT Some longtime opponents of partisan gerrymandering are reconsidering their strategies in the wake of the controversial redistricting fights that President Trump has sparked in Texas and other states.

The advocacy group Common Cause has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with its decades-long campaign against the redrawing of voting districts to make elections less competitive and help a particular political party win. But in recent weeks, the organization has softened its stance following Trump's call for new voting maps to help preserve the GOP's control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year's midterm election. A "blanket condemnation" of partisan gerrymandering "in this moment would amount to a call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation and people-powered democracy," Common Cause said... 12 statement.

When politicians redraw congressional district maps to favor their party, they may secure short-term victories. But those wins can come at a steep price — a loss of public faith in elections and, ultimately, in democracy itself. That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study led by UC Riverside political scientist Shaun Bowler, published in Political Research Quarterly. The research finds that partisan gerrymandering — the manipulation of district boundaries to lock in political advantage — does more than distort representation in Congress. It undermines the belief that elections are fair, a cornerstone of democratic legitimacy. Bowler, a professor of political science, said survey data from tens of thousands of voters in the 2020 and 2022 elections show that Americans view gerrymandering with the same disdain they reserve for bribery...

The difference, he said, is that gerrymandering is carried out in full public view, cloaked in arguable legality. Consider the current push in Texas, where Republican legislators and Gov. Greg Abbott, encouraged by President Donald Trump, are working to redraw congressional districts to add five GOP seats as part a Republican effort to retain control of Congress after next year’s midterm election. “It’s out in the open,” Bowler said. “They’re saying, ‘We’re rigging the midterm election to produce an outcome.’” Even for voters whose party benefits, such victories can feel hollow.

America S Gerrymandering Crisis And Why It Matters Now

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