"It’s completely obvious that you can’t have unilateral disarmament." Yes, so Obama and Democratic leaders are not even "kind of" hypocritical here. It's perfectly consistent to (a) wish for different rules and to even push for different rules and to even push for different rules on ethical grounds on the one hand while (b) playing by the rules you have in the meantime, and playing them just as ruthlessly as the other fella. In fact, pulling back on (b) is not only political malpractice but it undermines (a) by unfairly allowing your numbers to be diminished. In other words, you have to gerrymander in order to get even a chance of gerrymandering reform.
One analogy I like: Suppose you don't like the designated hitter rule and, in a perfect world by your lights, pitchers would have to bat or be replaced in the lineup. Let's say that you're in the business and have been outspoken about that view. Let's further say that you become the manager of an American League team. It wouldn't be even "kind of" hypocritical for you to use the DH rule as the other team does. Indeed, it would be absolutely insane for you to have your pitcher bat on principle.
You might say in response that the DH rule has zero ethical aspect, whereas gerrymandering does. It's actually wrong, you might say, for politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around. I actually agree. But unilateral disarmament *compounds* that injustice by, in essence, requiring that the baddies win. In that case, you're just a stupid chump who's made the world worse. You haven't gotten rid of gerrymandering. You've just made it so one side profits by it.
I don't agree at all. I think it is completely hypocritical for the Dems to ignore the voters, ignore fairness, and try to overturn independent commissions. It is not only unethical, but bad politics that will end up costing them votes.
What you're missing here, I think, is that voters hate political parties and don't want them to have more power.
It makes no sense to say the Dems are ignoring the voters. The voters approved this referendum, and the one in California. They're not being ignored at all.
You’re effectively rejecting the principle of self-defense altogether. It follows the same logic: if harm towards another person is always unethical and hypocritical, no matter the context, then you can never use force—even to stop an immediate threat to your life.
If someone blocks your escape route, slashes you with a knife, and doesn't listen to verbal commands, you must roll over and die. You are not allowed to strike back in self-defense, otherwise you are acting unethically and hypocritically.
I don't reject self-defense at all. I just don't see what it has to do with redistricting.
I reject that analogy that gerrymandering is an attack on the opposing party - I think it's an attack on the voters! You're basically saying "if my rival stabs an innocent person and steals from them, why can't I do it too?"
But if Democrats unilaterally disarm, then you haven't taken away power from parties. You've taken it away from one party. If you care about fair representation of the voters' preferences in outcomes, as I do, then unilateral disarmament is the worst option. The best is: no partisan gerrymandering. But that takes agreement across both parties, which we don't have yet. The next best is: okay, partisan gerrymandering, for now anyway, but at least both sides do it about equally. In that scenario, while there are fewer competitive districts and while states' congressional delegations become more lopsided, at least the overall makeup of Congress will roughly reflect where the country is as a whole. The worst option is: one party does it but the other party holds back. In that case, you still have a party picking their voters, you still have less competitive districts, you still have lopsided state delegations, but with the *additional* unfairness that all of that systematically and unfairly boosts one side.
This recent round of mid-cycle partisan gerrymandering was initiated by Trump and the GOP. They broke a norm that both sides had stuck to. They decided to become more mercenary about it. Breaking that norm just has to have the consequence that the other side will do likewise.
The situation is less stark when you're talking about state-level offices and representatives, and I think the argument that you should stick to non-partisan gerrymandering within your state even if states of another color do not is more plausible. (Edit: Though not unassailable. After all, statehouses are the ones who control the drawing of congressional districts.) But when you're talking about who makes up Congress, you can't just let one side steal a whole bunch of seats, and it's asinine to expect Democrats to sit down for that (though I wouldn't have necessarily put it past them).
You don't like the two parties. Okay, but that's what we got. It's entrenched because of the nature of the system. It's called Duverger's Law. So long as you have single-member, plurality-wins districts, as we mostly have in Congress, the overwhelming pressure will be for politicians to sort themselves into two competing parties. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. People have to come together at some point anyway. In parliamentary systems, you have more parties, but they sort themselves into coalitions. One way of looking at it is that they do that after elections whereas we do it before.
Calling it "unilateral disarmament" ignores that there aren't just two sides here, there are three. Quitting gerrymandering is not "disarmament" - it's refusing to shoot the third side - the voters!
Both parties are united in shooting the voters. It's not good. It's also bad politics, since voters like not being shot.
How is it like shooting the voters? I agree that it's bad, but let's take seriously its consequences on the one hand -- for the voters -- and the consequences of your preferred position on the other -- once again, for the voters. I'm going to only consider the voters here.
Partisan gerrymandering of the House of Representatives has the following results: (1) it reduces the number of competitive districts, and (2) it nudges states toward winner-take-most, as in, a slim partisan majority within a state may become, through savvy line-drawing, a big majority of that state's delegation of representatives in the House. It thus limits voter impact and responsiveness to voter preferences.
This isn't good, I don't like it, and I'd like to get rid of it. At the same time, let's not overstate the case. Maybe it's not as benign as the DH rule, my previous analogy, but neither is it as invidious as murder, your analogy. For one thing, it's legal. For another, it's been around since nearly the very beginning. (It's named for Elbridge Gerry, a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence.)
There are many aspects of our system I don't like. I don't like the two-senators-per-state rule, and I don't like the electoral college, for two. Gerrymandering strikes me as a sin against democracy on a par with those. In fact, I'd say it's not as bad as those insofar as they have the potential to entrench an unearned partisan advantage, whereas, as we're seeing, imbalances because of gerrymandering are subject to correction by the other side.
Let's compare, now, this world, our world, of partisan gerrymandering by both major parties to your preferred alternative. In that world, when one party does it or breaks a norm about it, you want the other party to "go high," tsk tsk, and take the hit. This isn't just bad for the virtuous party. It's bad for voters too. Not only have they seen their system rigged in terms of competitiveness and responsiveness. They've seen it rigged in favor of one party over the other. You're essentially insisting that one party be permitted to rig an outcome that, in fair elections, voters would not have chosen. That's worse, much worse, for the voters.
Perhaps you just think the two major parties are big stupid piles of poo, and so you feel no great stakes in ensuring that, for example, the partisan split in the House overall roughly corresponds with the partisan split in the country. But that argues too much. It's hard to muster great umbrage about any games politicians play if it's all meaningless. But, of course, it's not all meaningless. The two parties are very different in terms of ideology and substantive policy preferences. They appeal to different voter concerns and viewpoints. A core object of any system of representation is that government fairly represent voter preferences. Your solution is a much worse sin against that ideal than mine.
I'm against partisan gerrymandering. It's bad. I think it's far worse than the electoral college or having equal representation in the Senate, both of which I like and approve of. (States are politicial entities in their own rights and they should be treated fairly in the Senate, with no state having any more say than any other.)
And of course all these things are less bad than true infamy, like murder or the DH rule.
I think what you're missing about gerrymandering, though, is that it isn't always a net gain for a party. Voters don't like it and a party that gerrymanders will lose votes for doing so. It's not a given that they gain more from gerrymandering than they lose. It is a political decision, with costs and benefits.
I think a better move for the Dems would be (1) push for independent commissions at the state level, (2) campaign on that, (3) push for legislation at the federal level that would apply equally, and (4) campaign on that. That's the right thing to do ethically and pragmatically.
You underestimate how much it hurts the Dems politically to gerrymander. It hurts them more than the GOP to do it. They lose more votes, because it goes more against their brand.
I agree with you that there's a political cost to mercenary gerrymandering, and I also agree that that cost probably falls a bit more heavily on Democrats, though I think that's deeply confused and ridiculous.
My very first point was that it was entirely consistent, not hypocritical in the slightest, to strongly advocate for, campaign on, all your things, eliminating partisan gerrymandering altogether while at the same time playing by the rules we have in the meantime. You could tell a similar story about campaign finance. It strikes me as absurd that Democrats should come in for more criticism on these fronts -- because of their brand -- than the party that's entirely fine with the status quo, the party whose brand is, apparently, unembarrassed corruption and thus suffers nothing for its venality. The incentives in that world are awful: neither side should even *try* to improve the system.
Your suggestion is that Democratic gerrymandering to meet GOP gerrymandering will hurt Democrats politically, however confused or ridiculous that may be. Perhaps, but I'm skeptical that the tradeoffs break as you think they do. I note that Virginia Democrats made a point of making their change temporary, a move leaders credit as bringing enough voters on board. Democrats, even now, even in Virginia, are *still* being more virtuous than their red-state counterparts, and they did it by securing actual voter approval by direct vote, an outcome I don't think you can easily dismiss from a democratic perspective.
We can agree, however, that Democrats should very much do everything you say, advocate for eliminating partisan gerrymandering everywhere for everyone. We just disagree on what they should do in the meantime. In the meantime, acceding to GOP norm-busting seems not only foolish, like just letting them steal some seats unanswered as I said, but also harmful to the anti-gerrymandering cause insofar as it hurts the party most interested in getting rid of it.
Re the Senate and the electoral college, we can save that for another day. Suffice it to say for now that I agree with Madison that "fair treatment" in the Senate doesn't require that each state have an equal voice, no matter how small. California has something like 70 times -- not 7 but 70 times -- the population of Wyoming and yet has the same influence in the Senate. That's what's unfair, and obviously so. I don't view American states as akin to nation-states who have agreed to a treaty. That was the Articles of Confederation model, soon abandoned in favor of the more unifying Constitution. The treaty model, the EU model let's say, strikes me as particularly absurd on the ground when we consider the rather arbitrary circumstances of state creation. The Dakotas, for example, have four votes in the Senate next to California's two, and one would be hard pressed to make a strong case for why North and South Dakota should be seen as akin two distinct nations.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful comments -- I'll let you have the last word if you want. Otherwise, Cheers.
To add to this - the unilateral disarmament model assumes two sides, Dems and the GOP, each trying to gain seats, but ignores the third side - the voters!
For example, here in California, the Dems recently got rid of the independent commission the voters set up (against the Dems' wishes!)
The Dems benefit, the GOP loses out, but who really suffers? The voters, who now have less fair districts. It's a mistake to conflate the voters with one of the two parties - they are a third group, with different interests than either party.
Another good example is the "jungle primary" that California set up a while back. Both the Dems and the GOP came out against it, because it takes power away from the parties. The voters supported it, and it won!
How can you say that “the voters” set up the commission but “the Dems” dismantled it? It was a popular vote in California to gerrymander. The majority of Californians support it. Why should we be held hostage by our vote 10+ years ago?
The principle at the heart of British constitutional law is that Parliament is sovereign – but only the current Parliament. No Parliament can bind its successor. The Parliament of ten years ago was sovereign then, and legislated accordingly. But the Parliament of today is equally sovereign, and may overrule what came before.
The same principle applies to the sovereign people of an American state. The People of California are sovereign – but only the current People of California. The sovereign decisions of Californians in 2010 cannot permanently bind the sovereign decisions of Californians in 2025. These are not the same electorate, not the same moment, and not the same political reality.
The redistricting commission was not dismantled by the Democrats. It was (temporarily) dismantled by the same sovereign People who created it – through the same democratic mechanism they used to create it in the first place. Democrats supported that outcome, yes. But the People decided.
So the real question your argument has to answer is this: why should the sovereign will of Californians expressed in 2010 permanently override the sovereign will of Californians expressed in 2025? On what principle does an older democratic decision trump a newer one? That is not democracy – that is the dead hand of the past restraining the living.
In brief, I reject the idea that the current democratic will of the people should always prevail, since that changes with the winds of fashion.
Whereas individual human rights are real, constant things that genuinely exist, predate any government, and must be respected. I'm a firm believer that human rights aren't created by governments: they exist on their own.
If the majority wants to violate human rights, we need something that prevents them from doing so, something like a court that strikes down a majority decision that violates human rights. I'm a Jew, and I know what the majority would do to Jews if they could. I agree with the Founders that we need checks on mob rule and that laws should be difficult to change, not simply the result of current majority rule.
In America, we are suspicious of democracy, and we are proud that the wiser "dead hand of the past" rules this country and restrains the living from violating people's rights.
I share your concern about the tyranny of the majority – it's a serious problem. But there are two other tyrannies worth worrying about: the tyranny of the minority, and the tyranny of the dead. The constitutional safeguards you're describing can become either of those if misapplied.
You're right that fundamental rights must be protected against majoritarian whims. But the question is whether this particular dispute is actually about fundamental rights. Gerrymandering is not a human rights violation – not in any sense that any court, under any constitutional tradition, has recognised it as such. You're entitled to oppose it on democratic grounds, and those grounds are strong. But dressing it up as a rights question doesn't make it one.
Which brings me to the harder point: what you're actually arguing, stripped of the constitutional framing, is that the democratic settlement of fifteen years ago should override the democratic will of today – not because today's majority is threatening anyone's fundamental rights, but because you agreed with the old majority and you don't agree with the new one. That's a defensible political preference. What it isn't is a principle. A genuine principle about protecting minorities from majorities would apply regardless of which side of the political divide the majority happened to be on. This one, it seems to me, is doing something more convenient than that.
It should be difficult to change laws, not as simple as a majority vote, though it is still possible to go through the process to change them, which is what happened here with redistricting.
I wish it had been more difficult - ideally, in my view, they should have set up the nonpartisan redistricting commission to require, say, a 90% vote to change in both the legislature and popular vote, to insulate it from political pressure and make it much more difficult for a party to set it aside for partisan gain. Otherwise there is the danger of what happened here - gerrymandering for partisan gain.
Now in this case, there was a process in place for the legislature to dismantle that commission that was not that difficult, and they did try to follow that process. But there was litigation as to whether it was done correctly, which I believe still hasn't been resolved, though I'm not sure. If the result of the litigation is that the commission wasn't properly overturned, the court will restore the commission.
And in this case, yes, the people did decide to support the Democrats' power grab, though I'd argue they were defrauded and tricked by the Democrats' cynical political campaign. As I said in another comment, the Dems pretended this was a temporary move to stop President Trump, feeding on people's hatred of our President, and pretended it was just to counter GOP gerrymandering in Texas, but in fact it was intended as a permanent power grab for partisan gain, and had nothing to do with Trump or Texas. That was just an excuse.
A 90% threshold isn't a safeguard – it's a veto for minorities. If a simple majority was sufficient to create the redistricting commission in the first place, then a simple majority should be sufficient to remove it. That's what consistency requires. The moment you say "this particular thing needs a supermajority to undo," you're not protecting a principle – you're protecting an outcome you happen to like. Imagine if opponents of the commission had demanded a 90% threshold simply to establish it. You'd rightly recognise that as an attempt to frustrate the democratic will, not protect it.
On majority rule more broadly: yes, there are things a majority should not be able to do – strip minorities of fundamental rights, for instance. We've been over that. But outside of those constraints, majority rule is the only coherent basis for democratic government. Your proposed 90% threshold would render elections largely meaningless. Lose a vote? No matter – you can still block everything your opponents want, indefinitely, even with overwhelming public support against you. That's not a constitutional safeguard. That's minority rule with extra steps.
On the fraud allegation: the framing as an anti-Trump, anti-Texas measure wasn't spin – it was a straightforward description of the context. Republicans in Texas had engaged in a mid-decade partisan gerrymander specifically designed to shift the congressional map in their favour outside of the normal redistricting cycle. California Democrats responded in kind, explicitly as a counter-measure. That sequence of events is not disputed. You may think it was the wrong response, but responding to a partisan gerrymander with a counter-gerrymander and then accurately describing it as such is not fraud – it's politics. The voters who supported it knew what they were voting on.
And on permanence – it isn't permanent. Proposition 50 explicitly provides that legislatively drawn maps apply only until after the 2030 census, at which point the commission resumes unless another proposition supersedes it. This was a temporary measure, and the legislation says so on its face.
Very true about British law. America works very differently. Our founders were against what they thought of as "mob rule," and believed democracy needed checks to protect the rights of the minority.
We don't have a sovereign body, like Parliament - instead, we have a written Constitution, which must be followed and was made intentionally difficult to change. So our country was founded on the principle of the dead hand, in order to protect the minority from the harms of democracy.
We revere our founders in America - we believe they were wiser than we are now, and we are glad they put limits on what the government can do now. We believe in the power of binding and limiting democracy. The Constitution intentionally weakened the power of the government, dividing it up so that no one branch is too powerful.
Both federal and state constitutions can be changed, but only through a difficult process. If a legislative body tries to do something in violation of a federal or state constitution, that isn't allowed and it gets struck down.
And our states are sovereign. The UK has administrative divisions which Parliament can change at any time, and has before. But here states are not administrative divisions, they are sovereign entities with their own legislatures, laws, and courts, and they can't just be freely modified. State courts even take priority over federal courts in some situations! We aren't one country, we are a union of fifty countries!
And In the UK, as I understand it, Parliament can freely change the court system, and has, but here the Supreme Court is one of our branches of government and can't be changed without amending the Constitution.
All this is to say that no, that British principle does not apply to the people of a US state. The decisions Californians make in one year can absolutely bind Californians of a future year.
With respect, I think there's a hagiographic quality to the way you're describing the founding of the United States, and I don't share it. I'll acknowledge that many of the founders were remarkable people by the standards of their era – but "by the standards of their era" is doing a lot of work there. If we're going to appeal to their wisdom as a justification for binding future generations, we should be honest about what that wisdom also permitted. The same men who designed these constitutional constraints were, in a number of cases, enslaving people on their own property. I don't raise that to be provocative – I raise it because you're asking me to treat their judgment as almost oracular.
The constitution was not divine revelation. It was a political negotiation – a hard-fought compromise between people with radically different visions of government, responding to the failures of British rule and the Articles of Confederation. What emerged was not the ideal form of government; it was the minimum viable agreement. Enough centralisation to bring the Federalists on board, enough restraint to bring the Anti-Federalists along. That's politics, not wisdom handed down from a higher plane.
On the amendability point – yes, the constitution is harder to change than an ordinary statute, and I'd argue too hard. But "difficult" is not "impossible," as 27 amendments demonstrate. And beyond formal amendments, the operative constitution changes constantly through statute, executive action, and – crucially – judicial interpretation. The document sitting in the National Archives is not the whole of the American constitutional order. What the Supreme Court said yesterday shapes constitutional reality today in a way that the 1787 text alone does not.
So here's the principle I'd put to you: wherever constitutional change is possible – and it is always possible, through some mechanism – the currently sovereign people retain the capacity to overrule their predecessors. The difficulty of the process affects the threshold for change, not the sovereignty of the living. To say that Californians today are permanently bound by the decisions of past Californians, with no recourse, would mean they are not sovereign at all. Their ancestors were; they are merely governed by them. That seems precisely backwards to me.
I like your responses to JC very much, bravo. A couple of side points:
- The United States is not a union of fifty sovereign countries. This is a common misconception. This would be akin to a treaty, and that well describes the impotent Articles of Confederation the Constitution was written to replace. Two key differences, which became quite relevant in the Civil War and afterward:
One, states may not leave the union. This is well expressed by Madison where he said that states' ratification of the Constitution would be and must be "in toto and forever." A truly sovereign state could secede of its own accord (as the UK did in relation to the EU). The United States, by contrast, is, as millions of school children theoretically say every day, "indivisible," and all state officials and citizens owe allegiance not only to their state but (more saliently for most), the United States. Indeed, the Constitution itself requires that state officials swear allegiance to the Constitution.
Two, the Constitution and all laws enacted under it -- i.e., all federal law, as interpreted ultimately by federal courts -- comprise the "supreme law of the land." A truly sovereign state submits to no superior sovereign. The Constitution's supremacy clause, however, means that no state law may contravene the federal Constitution or even any federal law. JC is correct that the federal government is one of limited powers, with states retaining the residue. It's thus true that states are no mere administrative districts; they retain a greater degree of independence than that. Cook County is to Illinois *not* as Illinois is to the U.S. But those federal powers are vast and include all of those traditionally regarded as belonging to nations, like defense and all manner of foreign and interstate affairs. State sovereignty is thus, at most, a partial or junior sort of sovereignty and always has been.
In any case, I fail to see the relevance of this point when it comes to partisan gerrymandering and JC's argument. Indeed, state sovereignty, even if it's partial or junior, seems to support Virginia's and California's right to take just the action they did, in the sense that it was up to the states to abolish or suspend their non-partisan districting if they wanted to by just the means they adopted it in the first place, just as it was up to Indiana to decline the forceful invitation to do a mid-cycle redraw and just as it was up to states to adopt non-partisan districting -- maybe in their constitutions, maybe not -- to start with. As JC acknowledges, everyone is following the law here (and, if not, a court will say so). Different states approaching the issue differently is a demonstration of state power; it's no contravention of it.
- I appreciate your point about founder hagiography, but JC's position is not really supported by the founders. As I pointed out to JC earlier, gerrymandering owes its very name to Elbridge Gerry, a founder and signer of the Declaration of Independence, who acceded to a plan to draw statehouse districts in Massachusetts for partisan advantage. (He didn't like it but he did it in the heat of early partisan battles.) Critics likened one of the oddly shaped districts to a salamander, and gerrymandering was thus born -- in 1812. (Gerry, for what it's worth, was, on the whole, one of the good ones, who opposed slavery and powerfully resisted the 3/5ths compromise. If the South may count their slaves, which they treat as property, why may we not count our horses and cattle? he famously asked.) The founders did indeed establish counter-majoritarian rights, as JC emphasizes. But a right to non-gerrymandered districts is not among them. Perhaps it should be, but that would require a constitutional amendment. Or, short of such a comprehensive right, Congress may simply pass a law prohibiting partisan gerrymandering in drawing House districts. It's that easy. There just hasn't been the will.
I would only push back a bit on your suggestion that it should be easier to amend the Constitution. It's quite popular to be irritated by our system's perceived sclerosis -- too many veto points, too difficult to change, too much tyranny of the dead over the living, too many obviously unfair compromises (like two senators per state). Perhaps, but I frankly doubt that we would get a better system if it were easier to change it. I think there's a very strong chance that most progressives who pine for a constitutional convention, a wholesale rewrite, would probably be appalled by whatever emerged. Far better, in my view, for people to work within a system that has proved remarkably durable and successful and adaptable over 238 of the most turbulent years in human history.
Boo hoo. The Republicans sure are crying now. In California the voters DID have their say and they passed the Election Rigging Response Act by 63.9% to 36.1%.
The technical term for a win like this is a landslide.
You know which state completely shut out the voter's wishes? Texas.
They rammed through their Dummymandering Bill and the voters never got a say. How come you got no criticism about that? At least in California and Virginia they still run on democracy.
Unilateral disarmament could be solved by an explicit constitutional amendment, rather than having to use vague interpretations of the 14th that have inconsistently been upheld by the courts. I have no idea if an amendment like that would pass, but maybe this race to the bottom will spark some bipartisan support. Maybe.
"And Kyle Kondick calculates that the map that will be contested in November is almost perfectly fair."
You should probably clarify that Kondick is referring to the national map as being fair, not Virginia. Because there's not really any way to say that Virginia's map is fair. It's a state where 52% of the population voted for Democrats but will have 92% Democrat representation in the House. 40% difference is not the biggest gap, but all the states with bigger gaps (NH, NM, ME, RI, CT, IA) are small population states with only a few seats (2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 4) compared to Virginia's 11. The next most lopsided state with more than 5 seats is MA with 9 seats and also a ~40% difference, then IL with ~30% difference and 17 seats. One might also note that VA, MA, and IL are all very blue states. The TX redistricting will cause a difference of about 25% by comparison, slightly below the difference in CA. By this measure, the Democrats are much more aggressive with their gerrymandering than the GOP.
You should probably clarify that "By this measure, the Democrats are much more aggressive with their gerrymandering than the GOP" is only referring to Virginia.
The fact that the national map will be "almost perfectly fair" is a consequence of adding up a bunch of unfair maps, some favoring R some favoring D.
The CA redistricting is only about a ~10% difference, was anyone reporting that redistricting as "less aggressive" than Texas'?
It may have started with Texas in 2003, but things really went into high gear following REDMAP in 2010. It seemed like Democrats were fine with that status quo until 2025/26. Republicans seemed to have pushed their luck too far, and probably would have had a great shot of doing a 2010 repeat in 2030 otherwise.
I happen to live in VA-02, and I don't think our representative is doing a great job at either representing the Shore or the more-moderate Virginia Beach area, other than advocating for increased spending on shipbuilding. I thought she might take a stand on the OBB, realizing that it is pumping our deficit to unsustainably high levels, but alas, no.
I'm not sure what the point of having competitive districts is if those elected from those competitive districts just end up toeing the party line. Sure, Kiggans happens to wear the R badge, but she was preceded by Luria who wore the D badge just as ferociously. They both seemed to win more on their own party enthusiasm than they did on winning moderates.
I don't know how any gerrymandering discussion can mention the 2010 Census and not bring up the Maryland maps, which are a strong candidate for the most egregious gerrymander of all time.
The 2010 Maryland maps are certainly a strong candidate for the most egregious gerrymander of all time.
I can bring up the 2010 redistricting cycle without mentioning them because they were dwarfed by the R gerrymanders in that cycle. Illinois was another gerrymander by D's. Regardless, the topline result was D's won the house popular vote by 1%, but lost the actual house by over 7%.
It's like how someone can bring up how rich Mark Zuckerberg is without bringing up Tom Anderson (from MySpace). Was MySpace important? Yes. Was $580 million for MySpace a lot of money? Yes. Is Tom Anderson rich? Yes. Is that still all dwarfed by Facebook/Meta? Also yes.
This is kind of an odd take. It ignores a couple important points.
First, the Democrats have made a big show of democracy and fairness in voting being important to them. It's part of their branding. It's part of their advantage. They win voters by standing up to "consitutional hardball." They completely negate this advantage by turning around and engaging in the same skullduggery that they campaign against. They come off as more hypocritical than the GOP does for doing the same thing.
Second, they are doing something far different - and far worse - than what the GOP is doing, by not just gerrymandering, but by also taking districting away from independent commissions.
In my home state of California, the voters set up an independent commission to prevent gerrymandering. It's important to note that this wasn't something the Democratic party wanted - in fact, the party campaigned against it. But the voters supported it, and it passed.
Then, the Democrats didn't just try to gerrymander - they specifically took power away from an independent commission in order to do so! That's far worse than what the GOP did.
What the Dems did is not only unethical, because gerrymandering is unethical, but it's bad politics, because they are losing the voters they tried to win through arguing for voting rights and democracy! It goes against their brand and their earlier message. It was a mistake, on both pragmatic and ethical grounds.
Your stance contradicts itself. First popular vote says independent commission and that’s good. Then, popular vote says new map and it’s bad.
Texas gerrymandering was without pop vote, CA and VA have a vote. That’s the best form of democracy we have not “independent commission”.
If gerrymandering is bad then urge congress to sign dem’s anti gerrymandering bill and we are in the same place plus better protections against future pressure from exec branch. Duh.
Independent commissions are good, legislative control (aka gerrymandering) is bad.
This is absolutely a state issue and needs to be decided as a state-by-state issue, not federal. it's not congress's job, it's each state's job, just like abortion. And each state should have an independent commission do it.
I tend to agree. You really do have a stinker of a problem when literally every public official gets identified as being “a Republican or a Democrat”.
Maybe have 3 from each side and they have to agree on an independent chair of the committee. Perhaps over time partisan committee members will see the futility of only pushing their own causes….
The redistribution processes administered by the AEC do work very well in the Australian context (those interested can see the report on the current proposed redistribution process for South Australia to get an idea of how this all works: https://aec.gov.au/redistributions/2025/sa/proposed-redistribution/files/Proposed-redistribution-of-SA-federal-electorates-March-2026.pdf ). But I am not sure it would work transplanted into the political culture of the USA: the redistribution committee members do a good job of performing their work in an independent, non-partisan manner, but I fear that in the USA they would tend to be "Republican" or "Democrat" aligned officials and steer the process in a partisan manner.
It is difficult to enforce norms of independence / non-partisanship through process and procedure alone against determined efforts to subvert them. What is required is political cultural change.
Well, you might. But it’s no guarantee. Up until this year we have had a pretty solid two party system since 1944 (or 1923, or even 1909, depending on your definition). There’s many different aspects you could adopt or not. I know Nate sees benefits in having a devolved responsibility for “running” elections, but what having an independent national election commission allows is a uniform and non partisan redistricting process, that has multiple rounds of public - and party- submissions and comment. I’ve never heard of the process or outcome being challenged in court.
Do we also get a viable 3rd party? Looking at how successful compulsory voting is in Oz, I can't help but dream of a day when everyone fed up with the 2 party system here in the states actually out-votes the other two parties.
I have an honest question to the republicans objecting to this. Are you serious about putting an end to gerrymandering or are you only upset that the democrats have been more successful at it since republicans decided to make it a pillar of their 2026 strategy? I also see gerrymandering as fundamentally unjust, but those opposing the moves in California and Virginia almost universally stop short of supporting a move to end this practice. Why is that? Why be at pains to stress that this remain a state level issue when it's so clearly a national problem?
There are only eight states which use nonpartisan districting commissions. There are four that are Democratic, with California and New York being the most consequential. There are only two Republican states, Idaho and Montana, which is almost irrelevant since they both only have two congressmen with no solid Blue areas. Lastly there are the two swing states of Arizona and Michigan.
None of the big Red States have fair redistricting, it's all partisan gerrymandering. The Dems were fighting the battle with one hand tied behind their backs. But finally the Dems got some guts and came out swinging when Trump and Texas tried to rig the midterms by stealing five Democratic seats in Texas.
How can we put an end to this madness? The Republicans can join with the Democratic side in congress and pass the For the People Act. The law aims to prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
Up to now the Republicans voted against it every single time because they used to love gerrymandering.
To be even clearer, the Dems cynically and fraudulently manipulated the voters into taking it away, by using voters' fear of Trump and portraying it as an anti-Trump move, and falsely portraying it as temporary and necessary to counter GOP gerrymandering, when the true intent was pure, permanent, partisan gain.
As a result of the Dems' cynical, fraudulent, and deceptive campaigning, the voters approved the Democratic power grab.
Duh! California had one until they had to counter the undemocratic Texas congressional seat theft and election rigging.
If Texas had used their prior illegal gerrymandered map and not done Trump's little scheme to snatch five extra MAGA Republican seats, then California would have done nothing. The nonpartisan California map would be in force today. Same with Virginia.
California didn't have to do anything, and wasn't going to, until one isolated bad actor, Newsom, in an attempt to try to campaign for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, made the mistake of trying to push partisan gerrymandering.
California did not "have to" counter Texas redistricting. It was completely unnecessary, unethical, and stupid politically, though it may have benefitted Newsom personally. We could have done the right thing and kept our independent commission. Which would have been worse for the Democrats in the house, perhaps, but better for the people of California in that we would have fairly drawn districts.
It's also worth pointing out that what Texas did was (1) necessary because of Voting Rights Act issues, and (2) did not overturn an independent commission established by the votes, the way CA did. So what CA did was far worse.
Finally, it is far from clear that CA Democrats wouldn't have done their power grab anyway. As proof of this, the original proposal only went into effect if the Texas one did, but the CA Dems decided to remove that clause, so it will go into effect regardless. A pure power grab.
As someone who claims to think partisan gerrymandering is wrong, do you really find that defense of Texas convincing? The thin pretense of there being a “VRA issue” comes from a Trump DOJ memo, and lower courts tried to deny it. The only way SCOTUS was able to preserve it was to redefine the actions of Texas as a partisan gerrymander. That “independent commission” you mention is no such thing, it’s a back up commission in case the legislature fails to draw a map, and even then is made up of partisan executive office holders.
This is what I mean; if this mattered to you on principle why do you feel compelled to offer such a feeble defense of Texas doing the same thing? There’s a good faith discussion to be had about whether it’s right to treat this as a national issue, but if the only problem you have with the California and Virginia vote is that it hurts republicans then there’s nothing more to say.
Ok but actually defend that please. If political parties are using gerrymandering to distort the outcome of national elections for a states delegation, that makes the resulting legislature unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. It’s a national problem, and the logic of escalation of this arms race is structural, it’s not due to isolated bad actors.
It is due to isolated bad actors. Newsom, for instance, is an isolated bad actor who created partisan gerrymandering in California. He didn't have to do that. He sacrificed the people of California for the benefit of his own party, putting party over country.
What you're missing is that voters hate gerrymandering and punish parties for doing it. So the "logic of escalation of this arms race" has a built-in brake. A party that gerrymanders less wins votes because of that.
I don’t see how you can make this argument when both the Virginia and Californian gerrymanders were instituted with referenda, which is more than can be said for Texas. The idea that voters hate this and will punish it electorally is wishful thinking on your part.
And indeed, how can they punish one party when it’s practiced by both? You continue to frame this as if what California and Virginia are doing exist in a vacuum. Newsom never would have proposed a mid decade redraw (not “created”, it was the voters that made the new map possible) if the RNC and the Trump admin didn’t pursue a policy of compelling as many Republican run states as possible to redraw their maps first.
The chain of cause and effect here couldn’t be more explicit. Dems have proposed ending gerrymandering nationwide for years. They only started voting in these new maps after what Texas did, and even then tried to get Texas to back down first. Even now the Democratic Party maintains their position of ending partisan redistricting, and these new maps in California and Virginia were designed to be temporary unlike the Republican led effort. If you truly believe that the voters will vote against the party that gerrymanders more, it should be obvious which party they would punish and which one they would reward
I also just wanted to briefly respond to your Iran comment - the Iran war was absolutely necessary, and Trump gains a lot by it. First, it should be clear to anyone in the future that other presidents failed to act when it was necessary, but Trump did the hard but necessary thing. To the extent Trump cares about his legacy and being seen as having the balls to do what no one else could - which is very much part of his identity - this is a win for him.
From a more practical point, the whole world is in danger from Iran's imminent nukes that Obama allowed them to create. In particular, Jews are, and of course Trump's beloved daughter is Jewish.
Iran has repeatedly made comments about wanting to kill all the Jews, destroy Israel, and destroy America. To the extent that Trump wants to protect the country, his daughter, and Jews in general, he benefits from destroying Iran's capability to kill Jews.
You need to stop pretending you have your own political opinions. From every single of your comments here, you support anything good for the conservatives and disagree with anything good for liberals. You clearly chose your side and are playing for your team.
My views are a gallimaufry of opinions! As examples of more or less liberal views, I support higher taxes on the wealthy, LGBT rights, fighting global warming, trust-busting by breaking up all large companies, full drug, gambling, and sex work legalization, national health care, troops on the ground in Ukraine, and a ban on AI and social media.
I have some more conservative views on other topics as well, like immigration or gun rights.
Funny how the MAGA Republicans have suddenly come to think partisan gerrymandering is a bad thing. How is it they said nothing when Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, and soon to be Florida did mid decade gerrymandering?
Looks like MAGA Republicans hate it when the Democratic voters give them a taste of their own gerrymandering medicine.
BTW - If the Republicans really want to stop this kind of egregious gerrymandering, they can join the Democratic congressional side of the aisle and pass the For the People Act. The law aims to prohibit partisan gerrymandering. This kind of reform has been on the table for a decade.
The Republicans vote against it every single time. But now they're crying. Boo Hoo.
Mr. Silver makes a solid point that gerrymandering is not going away soon. But that should not stop us from considering alternatives outside of that box. Ranked choice voting (RCV) would not eliminate the effects of gerrymandering, but it would mitigate the evils of winner takes all. The Fair Representation Act, introduced repeatedly since 2017, would mandate RCV with 3–5 member districts for U.S. House elections. Not a cure but an effective treatment for what ails us.
It's complicated. For example, it would be VERY difficult to draw a massachusetts map that had even one Republican district, because Republicans and Democrats are spread pretty evenly around the state.
Calling it "unilateral disarmament" ignores that there aren't just two sides here, there are three. Quitting gerrymandering is not "disarmament" - it's refusing to shoot the third side - the voters!
Both parties are united in shooting the voters. It's not good. It's also bad politics, since voters like not being shot.
"I think it goes without saying that even if Republicans “started it”, we’re locked into a race-to-the-bottom now given extraordinarily high levels of partisanship."
I'm sorry but come on; we know that the 2020 Census was screwed up pretty badly in a way that netted reliably Blue states a lot of seats over Red ones. Ensuring that fewer voters get more electoral power over a paperwork error is not "democracy." I don't think that you can accurately frame this current redistricting fight without the epochal foul-up that was the Pandemic Census.
Also, I wanted to comment on the "unilateral disarmament" model. This model assumes two sides, Dems and the GOP, each trying to gain seats at the other's expense. It's inaccurate, because it ignores the third side - the voters!
For example, here in California, the Dems recently got rid of the independent commission the voters set up (against the Dems' wishes!)
The Dems benefit, the GOP loses out, but who really suffers? The voters, who now have less fair districts. It's a mistake to conflate the voters with one of the two parties - they are a third group, with different interests than either party.
Another good example is the "jungle primary" that California set up a while back. Both the Dems and the GOP came out against it, because it takes power away from the parties. The voters supported it, and it won!
There is really no simple fix to gerrymandering. Citizen redistricting might be better than a state legislature, but maybe not. The problem originates from the UK's Westminster plans from centuries ago. Single member districts, with the candidate getting the most wins (plurality winner).
In combination with the US two party system, which is a failure, is undemocratic, and is the source of many of the current political extremes, we have leaders of both parties who put party about everything.
No solution to selecting better federal and state legislators is perfect. But the US continues in many states with closed primaries. And a fear by both major parties that ranked choice voting will take away power from the political bosses who run both parties. RCV and open primaries are steps forward but the end of single member legislative races needs to change.
The real powerful force for change is the move by many voters away from either major party. In many states, unaffiliated or independent voters have a larger percentage than either party. And these are the voters who are not sheep, who are not voting like zombies for the political choice of party leaders and zealots. The population of unaffiliated voters is growing. What political group will take advantage of this transition.
If Democratic leaders invite unaffiliated voters into the Democratic primary tent with ranked choice voting, the candidate moving forward to November general election will likely tilt toward many but not all Democratic policies and perspectives. And then more Democrats will win in November.
But these Democrats will not always be extreme progressives. So the Democratic leaders would rather lose with an extremist than win with a moderate.
Too often, pollsters act as if there are only two possible political groups: Dems and Maggots. They should be looking to determine the views of unaffiliated voters in the 10-15 key states. National polls dilute the significance of polls and the likely outcome of political contests.
"It’s completely obvious that you can’t have unilateral disarmament." Yes, so Obama and Democratic leaders are not even "kind of" hypocritical here. It's perfectly consistent to (a) wish for different rules and to even push for different rules and to even push for different rules on ethical grounds on the one hand while (b) playing by the rules you have in the meantime, and playing them just as ruthlessly as the other fella. In fact, pulling back on (b) is not only political malpractice but it undermines (a) by unfairly allowing your numbers to be diminished. In other words, you have to gerrymander in order to get even a chance of gerrymandering reform.
One analogy I like: Suppose you don't like the designated hitter rule and, in a perfect world by your lights, pitchers would have to bat or be replaced in the lineup. Let's say that you're in the business and have been outspoken about that view. Let's further say that you become the manager of an American League team. It wouldn't be even "kind of" hypocritical for you to use the DH rule as the other team does. Indeed, it would be absolutely insane for you to have your pitcher bat on principle.
You might say in response that the DH rule has zero ethical aspect, whereas gerrymandering does. It's actually wrong, you might say, for politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around. I actually agree. But unilateral disarmament *compounds* that injustice by, in essence, requiring that the baddies win. In that case, you're just a stupid chump who's made the world worse. You haven't gotten rid of gerrymandering. You've just made it so one side profits by it.
I don't agree at all. I think it is completely hypocritical for the Dems to ignore the voters, ignore fairness, and try to overturn independent commissions. It is not only unethical, but bad politics that will end up costing them votes.
What you're missing here, I think, is that voters hate political parties and don't want them to have more power.
It makes no sense to say the Dems are ignoring the voters. The voters approved this referendum, and the one in California. They're not being ignored at all.
Well, ignore the previous will of the voters, then
You’re effectively rejecting the principle of self-defense altogether. It follows the same logic: if harm towards another person is always unethical and hypocritical, no matter the context, then you can never use force—even to stop an immediate threat to your life.
If someone blocks your escape route, slashes you with a knife, and doesn't listen to verbal commands, you must roll over and die. You are not allowed to strike back in self-defense, otherwise you are acting unethically and hypocritically.
I don't reject self-defense at all. I just don't see what it has to do with redistricting.
I reject that analogy that gerrymandering is an attack on the opposing party - I think it's an attack on the voters! You're basically saying "if my rival stabs an innocent person and steals from them, why can't I do it too?"
But if Democrats unilaterally disarm, then you haven't taken away power from parties. You've taken it away from one party. If you care about fair representation of the voters' preferences in outcomes, as I do, then unilateral disarmament is the worst option. The best is: no partisan gerrymandering. But that takes agreement across both parties, which we don't have yet. The next best is: okay, partisan gerrymandering, for now anyway, but at least both sides do it about equally. In that scenario, while there are fewer competitive districts and while states' congressional delegations become more lopsided, at least the overall makeup of Congress will roughly reflect where the country is as a whole. The worst option is: one party does it but the other party holds back. In that case, you still have a party picking their voters, you still have less competitive districts, you still have lopsided state delegations, but with the *additional* unfairness that all of that systematically and unfairly boosts one side.
This recent round of mid-cycle partisan gerrymandering was initiated by Trump and the GOP. They broke a norm that both sides had stuck to. They decided to become more mercenary about it. Breaking that norm just has to have the consequence that the other side will do likewise.
The situation is less stark when you're talking about state-level offices and representatives, and I think the argument that you should stick to non-partisan gerrymandering within your state even if states of another color do not is more plausible. (Edit: Though not unassailable. After all, statehouses are the ones who control the drawing of congressional districts.) But when you're talking about who makes up Congress, you can't just let one side steal a whole bunch of seats, and it's asinine to expect Democrats to sit down for that (though I wouldn't have necessarily put it past them).
You don't like the two parties. Okay, but that's what we got. It's entrenched because of the nature of the system. It's called Duverger's Law. So long as you have single-member, plurality-wins districts, as we mostly have in Congress, the overwhelming pressure will be for politicians to sort themselves into two competing parties. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. People have to come together at some point anyway. In parliamentary systems, you have more parties, but they sort themselves into coalitions. One way of looking at it is that they do that after elections whereas we do it before.
Calling it "unilateral disarmament" ignores that there aren't just two sides here, there are three. Quitting gerrymandering is not "disarmament" - it's refusing to shoot the third side - the voters!
Both parties are united in shooting the voters. It's not good. It's also bad politics, since voters like not being shot.
How is it like shooting the voters? I agree that it's bad, but let's take seriously its consequences on the one hand -- for the voters -- and the consequences of your preferred position on the other -- once again, for the voters. I'm going to only consider the voters here.
Partisan gerrymandering of the House of Representatives has the following results: (1) it reduces the number of competitive districts, and (2) it nudges states toward winner-take-most, as in, a slim partisan majority within a state may become, through savvy line-drawing, a big majority of that state's delegation of representatives in the House. It thus limits voter impact and responsiveness to voter preferences.
This isn't good, I don't like it, and I'd like to get rid of it. At the same time, let's not overstate the case. Maybe it's not as benign as the DH rule, my previous analogy, but neither is it as invidious as murder, your analogy. For one thing, it's legal. For another, it's been around since nearly the very beginning. (It's named for Elbridge Gerry, a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence.)
There are many aspects of our system I don't like. I don't like the two-senators-per-state rule, and I don't like the electoral college, for two. Gerrymandering strikes me as a sin against democracy on a par with those. In fact, I'd say it's not as bad as those insofar as they have the potential to entrench an unearned partisan advantage, whereas, as we're seeing, imbalances because of gerrymandering are subject to correction by the other side.
Let's compare, now, this world, our world, of partisan gerrymandering by both major parties to your preferred alternative. In that world, when one party does it or breaks a norm about it, you want the other party to "go high," tsk tsk, and take the hit. This isn't just bad for the virtuous party. It's bad for voters too. Not only have they seen their system rigged in terms of competitiveness and responsiveness. They've seen it rigged in favor of one party over the other. You're essentially insisting that one party be permitted to rig an outcome that, in fair elections, voters would not have chosen. That's worse, much worse, for the voters.
Perhaps you just think the two major parties are big stupid piles of poo, and so you feel no great stakes in ensuring that, for example, the partisan split in the House overall roughly corresponds with the partisan split in the country. But that argues too much. It's hard to muster great umbrage about any games politicians play if it's all meaningless. But, of course, it's not all meaningless. The two parties are very different in terms of ideology and substantive policy preferences. They appeal to different voter concerns and viewpoints. A core object of any system of representation is that government fairly represent voter preferences. Your solution is a much worse sin against that ideal than mine.
I'm against partisan gerrymandering. It's bad. I think it's far worse than the electoral college or having equal representation in the Senate, both of which I like and approve of. (States are politicial entities in their own rights and they should be treated fairly in the Senate, with no state having any more say than any other.)
And of course all these things are less bad than true infamy, like murder or the DH rule.
I think what you're missing about gerrymandering, though, is that it isn't always a net gain for a party. Voters don't like it and a party that gerrymanders will lose votes for doing so. It's not a given that they gain more from gerrymandering than they lose. It is a political decision, with costs and benefits.
I think a better move for the Dems would be (1) push for independent commissions at the state level, (2) campaign on that, (3) push for legislation at the federal level that would apply equally, and (4) campaign on that. That's the right thing to do ethically and pragmatically.
You underestimate how much it hurts the Dems politically to gerrymander. It hurts them more than the GOP to do it. They lose more votes, because it goes more against their brand.
I agree with you that there's a political cost to mercenary gerrymandering, and I also agree that that cost probably falls a bit more heavily on Democrats, though I think that's deeply confused and ridiculous.
My very first point was that it was entirely consistent, not hypocritical in the slightest, to strongly advocate for, campaign on, all your things, eliminating partisan gerrymandering altogether while at the same time playing by the rules we have in the meantime. You could tell a similar story about campaign finance. It strikes me as absurd that Democrats should come in for more criticism on these fronts -- because of their brand -- than the party that's entirely fine with the status quo, the party whose brand is, apparently, unembarrassed corruption and thus suffers nothing for its venality. The incentives in that world are awful: neither side should even *try* to improve the system.
Your suggestion is that Democratic gerrymandering to meet GOP gerrymandering will hurt Democrats politically, however confused or ridiculous that may be. Perhaps, but I'm skeptical that the tradeoffs break as you think they do. I note that Virginia Democrats made a point of making their change temporary, a move leaders credit as bringing enough voters on board. Democrats, even now, even in Virginia, are *still* being more virtuous than their red-state counterparts, and they did it by securing actual voter approval by direct vote, an outcome I don't think you can easily dismiss from a democratic perspective.
We can agree, however, that Democrats should very much do everything you say, advocate for eliminating partisan gerrymandering everywhere for everyone. We just disagree on what they should do in the meantime. In the meantime, acceding to GOP norm-busting seems not only foolish, like just letting them steal some seats unanswered as I said, but also harmful to the anti-gerrymandering cause insofar as it hurts the party most interested in getting rid of it.
Re the Senate and the electoral college, we can save that for another day. Suffice it to say for now that I agree with Madison that "fair treatment" in the Senate doesn't require that each state have an equal voice, no matter how small. California has something like 70 times -- not 7 but 70 times -- the population of Wyoming and yet has the same influence in the Senate. That's what's unfair, and obviously so. I don't view American states as akin to nation-states who have agreed to a treaty. That was the Articles of Confederation model, soon abandoned in favor of the more unifying Constitution. The treaty model, the EU model let's say, strikes me as particularly absurd on the ground when we consider the rather arbitrary circumstances of state creation. The Dakotas, for example, have four votes in the Senate next to California's two, and one would be hard pressed to make a strong case for why North and South Dakota should be seen as akin two distinct nations.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful comments -- I'll let you have the last word if you want. Otherwise, Cheers.
To add to this - the unilateral disarmament model assumes two sides, Dems and the GOP, each trying to gain seats, but ignores the third side - the voters!
For example, here in California, the Dems recently got rid of the independent commission the voters set up (against the Dems' wishes!)
The Dems benefit, the GOP loses out, but who really suffers? The voters, who now have less fair districts. It's a mistake to conflate the voters with one of the two parties - they are a third group, with different interests than either party.
Another good example is the "jungle primary" that California set up a while back. Both the Dems and the GOP came out against it, because it takes power away from the parties. The voters supported it, and it won!
How can you say that “the voters” set up the commission but “the Dems” dismantled it? It was a popular vote in California to gerrymander. The majority of Californians support it. Why should we be held hostage by our vote 10+ years ago?
The principle at the heart of British constitutional law is that Parliament is sovereign – but only the current Parliament. No Parliament can bind its successor. The Parliament of ten years ago was sovereign then, and legislated accordingly. But the Parliament of today is equally sovereign, and may overrule what came before.
The same principle applies to the sovereign people of an American state. The People of California are sovereign – but only the current People of California. The sovereign decisions of Californians in 2010 cannot permanently bind the sovereign decisions of Californians in 2025. These are not the same electorate, not the same moment, and not the same political reality.
The redistricting commission was not dismantled by the Democrats. It was (temporarily) dismantled by the same sovereign People who created it – through the same democratic mechanism they used to create it in the first place. Democrats supported that outcome, yes. But the People decided.
So the real question your argument has to answer is this: why should the sovereign will of Californians expressed in 2010 permanently override the sovereign will of Californians expressed in 2025? On what principle does an older democratic decision trump a newer one? That is not democracy – that is the dead hand of the past restraining the living.
In brief, I reject the idea that the current democratic will of the people should always prevail, since that changes with the winds of fashion.
Whereas individual human rights are real, constant things that genuinely exist, predate any government, and must be respected. I'm a firm believer that human rights aren't created by governments: they exist on their own.
If the majority wants to violate human rights, we need something that prevents them from doing so, something like a court that strikes down a majority decision that violates human rights. I'm a Jew, and I know what the majority would do to Jews if they could. I agree with the Founders that we need checks on mob rule and that laws should be difficult to change, not simply the result of current majority rule.
In America, we are suspicious of democracy, and we are proud that the wiser "dead hand of the past" rules this country and restrains the living from violating people's rights.
I share your concern about the tyranny of the majority – it's a serious problem. But there are two other tyrannies worth worrying about: the tyranny of the minority, and the tyranny of the dead. The constitutional safeguards you're describing can become either of those if misapplied.
You're right that fundamental rights must be protected against majoritarian whims. But the question is whether this particular dispute is actually about fundamental rights. Gerrymandering is not a human rights violation – not in any sense that any court, under any constitutional tradition, has recognised it as such. You're entitled to oppose it on democratic grounds, and those grounds are strong. But dressing it up as a rights question doesn't make it one.
Which brings me to the harder point: what you're actually arguing, stripped of the constitutional framing, is that the democratic settlement of fifteen years ago should override the democratic will of today – not because today's majority is threatening anyone's fundamental rights, but because you agreed with the old majority and you don't agree with the new one. That's a defensible political preference. What it isn't is a principle. A genuine principle about protecting minorities from majorities would apply regardless of which side of the political divide the majority happened to be on. This one, it seems to me, is doing something more convenient than that.
It should be difficult to change laws, not as simple as a majority vote, though it is still possible to go through the process to change them, which is what happened here with redistricting.
I wish it had been more difficult - ideally, in my view, they should have set up the nonpartisan redistricting commission to require, say, a 90% vote to change in both the legislature and popular vote, to insulate it from political pressure and make it much more difficult for a party to set it aside for partisan gain. Otherwise there is the danger of what happened here - gerrymandering for partisan gain.
Now in this case, there was a process in place for the legislature to dismantle that commission that was not that difficult, and they did try to follow that process. But there was litigation as to whether it was done correctly, which I believe still hasn't been resolved, though I'm not sure. If the result of the litigation is that the commission wasn't properly overturned, the court will restore the commission.
And in this case, yes, the people did decide to support the Democrats' power grab, though I'd argue they were defrauded and tricked by the Democrats' cynical political campaign. As I said in another comment, the Dems pretended this was a temporary move to stop President Trump, feeding on people's hatred of our President, and pretended it was just to counter GOP gerrymandering in Texas, but in fact it was intended as a permanent power grab for partisan gain, and had nothing to do with Trump or Texas. That was just an excuse.
A 90% threshold isn't a safeguard – it's a veto for minorities. If a simple majority was sufficient to create the redistricting commission in the first place, then a simple majority should be sufficient to remove it. That's what consistency requires. The moment you say "this particular thing needs a supermajority to undo," you're not protecting a principle – you're protecting an outcome you happen to like. Imagine if opponents of the commission had demanded a 90% threshold simply to establish it. You'd rightly recognise that as an attempt to frustrate the democratic will, not protect it.
On majority rule more broadly: yes, there are things a majority should not be able to do – strip minorities of fundamental rights, for instance. We've been over that. But outside of those constraints, majority rule is the only coherent basis for democratic government. Your proposed 90% threshold would render elections largely meaningless. Lose a vote? No matter – you can still block everything your opponents want, indefinitely, even with overwhelming public support against you. That's not a constitutional safeguard. That's minority rule with extra steps.
On the fraud allegation: the framing as an anti-Trump, anti-Texas measure wasn't spin – it was a straightforward description of the context. Republicans in Texas had engaged in a mid-decade partisan gerrymander specifically designed to shift the congressional map in their favour outside of the normal redistricting cycle. California Democrats responded in kind, explicitly as a counter-measure. That sequence of events is not disputed. You may think it was the wrong response, but responding to a partisan gerrymander with a counter-gerrymander and then accurately describing it as such is not fraud – it's politics. The voters who supported it knew what they were voting on.
And on permanence – it isn't permanent. Proposition 50 explicitly provides that legislatively drawn maps apply only until after the 2030 census, at which point the commission resumes unless another proposition supersedes it. This was a temporary measure, and the legislation says so on its face.
Very true about British law. America works very differently. Our founders were against what they thought of as "mob rule," and believed democracy needed checks to protect the rights of the minority.
We don't have a sovereign body, like Parliament - instead, we have a written Constitution, which must be followed and was made intentionally difficult to change. So our country was founded on the principle of the dead hand, in order to protect the minority from the harms of democracy.
We revere our founders in America - we believe they were wiser than we are now, and we are glad they put limits on what the government can do now. We believe in the power of binding and limiting democracy. The Constitution intentionally weakened the power of the government, dividing it up so that no one branch is too powerful.
Both federal and state constitutions can be changed, but only through a difficult process. If a legislative body tries to do something in violation of a federal or state constitution, that isn't allowed and it gets struck down.
And our states are sovereign. The UK has administrative divisions which Parliament can change at any time, and has before. But here states are not administrative divisions, they are sovereign entities with their own legislatures, laws, and courts, and they can't just be freely modified. State courts even take priority over federal courts in some situations! We aren't one country, we are a union of fifty countries!
And In the UK, as I understand it, Parliament can freely change the court system, and has, but here the Supreme Court is one of our branches of government and can't be changed without amending the Constitution.
All this is to say that no, that British principle does not apply to the people of a US state. The decisions Californians make in one year can absolutely bind Californians of a future year.
With respect, I think there's a hagiographic quality to the way you're describing the founding of the United States, and I don't share it. I'll acknowledge that many of the founders were remarkable people by the standards of their era – but "by the standards of their era" is doing a lot of work there. If we're going to appeal to their wisdom as a justification for binding future generations, we should be honest about what that wisdom also permitted. The same men who designed these constitutional constraints were, in a number of cases, enslaving people on their own property. I don't raise that to be provocative – I raise it because you're asking me to treat their judgment as almost oracular.
The constitution was not divine revelation. It was a political negotiation – a hard-fought compromise between people with radically different visions of government, responding to the failures of British rule and the Articles of Confederation. What emerged was not the ideal form of government; it was the minimum viable agreement. Enough centralisation to bring the Federalists on board, enough restraint to bring the Anti-Federalists along. That's politics, not wisdom handed down from a higher plane.
On the amendability point – yes, the constitution is harder to change than an ordinary statute, and I'd argue too hard. But "difficult" is not "impossible," as 27 amendments demonstrate. And beyond formal amendments, the operative constitution changes constantly through statute, executive action, and – crucially – judicial interpretation. The document sitting in the National Archives is not the whole of the American constitutional order. What the Supreme Court said yesterday shapes constitutional reality today in a way that the 1787 text alone does not.
So here's the principle I'd put to you: wherever constitutional change is possible – and it is always possible, through some mechanism – the currently sovereign people retain the capacity to overrule their predecessors. The difficulty of the process affects the threshold for change, not the sovereignty of the living. To say that Californians today are permanently bound by the decisions of past Californians, with no recourse, would mean they are not sovereign at all. Their ancestors were; they are merely governed by them. That seems precisely backwards to me.
I like your responses to JC very much, bravo. A couple of side points:
- The United States is not a union of fifty sovereign countries. This is a common misconception. This would be akin to a treaty, and that well describes the impotent Articles of Confederation the Constitution was written to replace. Two key differences, which became quite relevant in the Civil War and afterward:
One, states may not leave the union. This is well expressed by Madison where he said that states' ratification of the Constitution would be and must be "in toto and forever." A truly sovereign state could secede of its own accord (as the UK did in relation to the EU). The United States, by contrast, is, as millions of school children theoretically say every day, "indivisible," and all state officials and citizens owe allegiance not only to their state but (more saliently for most), the United States. Indeed, the Constitution itself requires that state officials swear allegiance to the Constitution.
Two, the Constitution and all laws enacted under it -- i.e., all federal law, as interpreted ultimately by federal courts -- comprise the "supreme law of the land." A truly sovereign state submits to no superior sovereign. The Constitution's supremacy clause, however, means that no state law may contravene the federal Constitution or even any federal law. JC is correct that the federal government is one of limited powers, with states retaining the residue. It's thus true that states are no mere administrative districts; they retain a greater degree of independence than that. Cook County is to Illinois *not* as Illinois is to the U.S. But those federal powers are vast and include all of those traditionally regarded as belonging to nations, like defense and all manner of foreign and interstate affairs. State sovereignty is thus, at most, a partial or junior sort of sovereignty and always has been.
In any case, I fail to see the relevance of this point when it comes to partisan gerrymandering and JC's argument. Indeed, state sovereignty, even if it's partial or junior, seems to support Virginia's and California's right to take just the action they did, in the sense that it was up to the states to abolish or suspend their non-partisan districting if they wanted to by just the means they adopted it in the first place, just as it was up to Indiana to decline the forceful invitation to do a mid-cycle redraw and just as it was up to states to adopt non-partisan districting -- maybe in their constitutions, maybe not -- to start with. As JC acknowledges, everyone is following the law here (and, if not, a court will say so). Different states approaching the issue differently is a demonstration of state power; it's no contravention of it.
- I appreciate your point about founder hagiography, but JC's position is not really supported by the founders. As I pointed out to JC earlier, gerrymandering owes its very name to Elbridge Gerry, a founder and signer of the Declaration of Independence, who acceded to a plan to draw statehouse districts in Massachusetts for partisan advantage. (He didn't like it but he did it in the heat of early partisan battles.) Critics likened one of the oddly shaped districts to a salamander, and gerrymandering was thus born -- in 1812. (Gerry, for what it's worth, was, on the whole, one of the good ones, who opposed slavery and powerfully resisted the 3/5ths compromise. If the South may count their slaves, which they treat as property, why may we not count our horses and cattle? he famously asked.) The founders did indeed establish counter-majoritarian rights, as JC emphasizes. But a right to non-gerrymandered districts is not among them. Perhaps it should be, but that would require a constitutional amendment. Or, short of such a comprehensive right, Congress may simply pass a law prohibiting partisan gerrymandering in drawing House districts. It's that easy. There just hasn't been the will.
I would only push back a bit on your suggestion that it should be easier to amend the Constitution. It's quite popular to be irritated by our system's perceived sclerosis -- too many veto points, too difficult to change, too much tyranny of the dead over the living, too many obviously unfair compromises (like two senators per state). Perhaps, but I frankly doubt that we would get a better system if it were easier to change it. I think there's a very strong chance that most progressives who pine for a constitutional convention, a wholesale rewrite, would probably be appalled by whatever emerged. Far better, in my view, for people to work within a system that has proved remarkably durable and successful and adaptable over 238 of the most turbulent years in human history.
Boo hoo. The Republicans sure are crying now. In California the voters DID have their say and they passed the Election Rigging Response Act by 63.9% to 36.1%.
The technical term for a win like this is a landslide.
You know which state completely shut out the voter's wishes? Texas.
They rammed through their Dummymandering Bill and the voters never got a say. How come you got no criticism about that? At least in California and Virginia they still run on democracy.
Unilateral disarmament could be solved by an explicit constitutional amendment, rather than having to use vague interpretations of the 14th that have inconsistently been upheld by the courts. I have no idea if an amendment like that would pass, but maybe this race to the bottom will spark some bipartisan support. Maybe.
"And Kyle Kondick calculates that the map that will be contested in November is almost perfectly fair."
You should probably clarify that Kondick is referring to the national map as being fair, not Virginia. Because there's not really any way to say that Virginia's map is fair. It's a state where 52% of the population voted for Democrats but will have 92% Democrat representation in the House. 40% difference is not the biggest gap, but all the states with bigger gaps (NH, NM, ME, RI, CT, IA) are small population states with only a few seats (2, 3, 2, 2, 5, 4) compared to Virginia's 11. The next most lopsided state with more than 5 seats is MA with 9 seats and also a ~40% difference, then IL with ~30% difference and 17 seats. One might also note that VA, MA, and IL are all very blue states. The TX redistricting will cause a difference of about 25% by comparison, slightly below the difference in CA. By this measure, the Democrats are much more aggressive with their gerrymandering than the GOP.
You should probably clarify that "By this measure, the Democrats are much more aggressive with their gerrymandering than the GOP" is only referring to Virginia.
The fact that the national map will be "almost perfectly fair" is a consequence of adding up a bunch of unfair maps, some favoring R some favoring D.
The CA redistricting is only about a ~10% difference, was anyone reporting that redistricting as "less aggressive" than Texas'?
It may have started with Texas in 2003, but things really went into high gear following REDMAP in 2010. It seemed like Democrats were fine with that status quo until 2025/26. Republicans seemed to have pushed their luck too far, and probably would have had a great shot of doing a 2010 repeat in 2030 otherwise.
I happen to live in VA-02, and I don't think our representative is doing a great job at either representing the Shore or the more-moderate Virginia Beach area, other than advocating for increased spending on shipbuilding. I thought she might take a stand on the OBB, realizing that it is pumping our deficit to unsustainably high levels, but alas, no.
I'm not sure what the point of having competitive districts is if those elected from those competitive districts just end up toeing the party line. Sure, Kiggans happens to wear the R badge, but she was preceded by Luria who wore the D badge just as ferociously. They both seemed to win more on their own party enthusiasm than they did on winning moderates.
I don't know how any gerrymandering discussion can mention the 2010 Census and not bring up the Maryland maps, which are a strong candidate for the most egregious gerrymander of all time.
https://planning.maryland.gov/Redistricting/Documents/2010maps/Cong/Statewide.pdf
The 2010 Maryland maps are certainly a strong candidate for the most egregious gerrymander of all time.
I can bring up the 2010 redistricting cycle without mentioning them because they were dwarfed by the R gerrymanders in that cycle. Illinois was another gerrymander by D's. Regardless, the topline result was D's won the house popular vote by 1%, but lost the actual house by over 7%.
It's like how someone can bring up how rich Mark Zuckerberg is without bringing up Tom Anderson (from MySpace). Was MySpace important? Yes. Was $580 million for MySpace a lot of money? Yes. Is Tom Anderson rich? Yes. Is that still all dwarfed by Facebook/Meta? Also yes.
This is kind of an odd take. It ignores a couple important points.
First, the Democrats have made a big show of democracy and fairness in voting being important to them. It's part of their branding. It's part of their advantage. They win voters by standing up to "consitutional hardball." They completely negate this advantage by turning around and engaging in the same skullduggery that they campaign against. They come off as more hypocritical than the GOP does for doing the same thing.
Second, they are doing something far different - and far worse - than what the GOP is doing, by not just gerrymandering, but by also taking districting away from independent commissions.
In my home state of California, the voters set up an independent commission to prevent gerrymandering. It's important to note that this wasn't something the Democratic party wanted - in fact, the party campaigned against it. But the voters supported it, and it passed.
Then, the Democrats didn't just try to gerrymander - they specifically took power away from an independent commission in order to do so! That's far worse than what the GOP did.
What the Dems did is not only unethical, because gerrymandering is unethical, but it's bad politics, because they are losing the voters they tried to win through arguing for voting rights and democracy! It goes against their brand and their earlier message. It was a mistake, on both pragmatic and ethical grounds.
Your stance contradicts itself. First popular vote says independent commission and that’s good. Then, popular vote says new map and it’s bad.
Texas gerrymandering was without pop vote, CA and VA have a vote. That’s the best form of democracy we have not “independent commission”.
If gerrymandering is bad then urge congress to sign dem’s anti gerrymandering bill and we are in the same place plus better protections against future pressure from exec branch. Duh.
Independent commissions are good, legislative control (aka gerrymandering) is bad.
This is absolutely a state issue and needs to be decided as a state-by-state issue, not federal. it's not congress's job, it's each state's job, just like abortion. And each state should have an independent commission do it.
As I’ve said many times before Nate- come and visit Australia for a solution- this time for non-partisan redistricting.
I tend to agree. You really do have a stinker of a problem when literally every public official gets identified as being “a Republican or a Democrat”.
Maybe have 3 from each side and they have to agree on an independent chair of the committee. Perhaps over time partisan committee members will see the futility of only pushing their own causes….
The redistribution processes administered by the AEC do work very well in the Australian context (those interested can see the report on the current proposed redistribution process for South Australia to get an idea of how this all works: https://aec.gov.au/redistributions/2025/sa/proposed-redistribution/files/Proposed-redistribution-of-SA-federal-electorates-March-2026.pdf ). But I am not sure it would work transplanted into the political culture of the USA: the redistribution committee members do a good job of performing their work in an independent, non-partisan manner, but I fear that in the USA they would tend to be "Republican" or "Democrat" aligned officials and steer the process in a partisan manner.
It is difficult to enforce norms of independence / non-partisanship through process and procedure alone against determined efforts to subvert them. What is required is political cultural change.
Well, you might. But it’s no guarantee. Up until this year we have had a pretty solid two party system since 1944 (or 1923, or even 1909, depending on your definition). There’s many different aspects you could adopt or not. I know Nate sees benefits in having a devolved responsibility for “running” elections, but what having an independent national election commission allows is a uniform and non partisan redistricting process, that has multiple rounds of public - and party- submissions and comment. I’ve never heard of the process or outcome being challenged in court.
Do we also get a viable 3rd party? Looking at how successful compulsory voting is in Oz, I can't help but dream of a day when everyone fed up with the 2 party system here in the states actually out-votes the other two parties.
I have an honest question to the republicans objecting to this. Are you serious about putting an end to gerrymandering or are you only upset that the democrats have been more successful at it since republicans decided to make it a pillar of their 2026 strategy? I also see gerrymandering as fundamentally unjust, but those opposing the moves in California and Virginia almost universally stop short of supporting a move to end this practice. Why is that? Why be at pains to stress that this remain a state level issue when it's so clearly a national problem?
There are only eight states which use nonpartisan districting commissions. There are four that are Democratic, with California and New York being the most consequential. There are only two Republican states, Idaho and Montana, which is almost irrelevant since they both only have two congressmen with no solid Blue areas. Lastly there are the two swing states of Arizona and Michigan.
None of the big Red States have fair redistricting, it's all partisan gerrymandering. The Dems were fighting the battle with one hand tied behind their backs. But finally the Dems got some guts and came out swinging when Trump and Texas tried to rig the midterms by stealing five Democratic seats in Texas.
How can we put an end to this madness? The Republicans can join with the Democratic side in congress and pass the For the People Act. The law aims to prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
Up to now the Republicans voted against it every single time because they used to love gerrymandering.
California no longer uses an independent commission. The Dems cynically took it away here, sadly. Even though it was slightly biased towards Dems.
To be clear, the voters took it away, in a landslide.
you keep arguing "for the voters", except when the voters vote for gerrymandering
To be even clearer, the Dems cynically and fraudulently manipulated the voters into taking it away, by using voters' fear of Trump and portraying it as an anti-Trump move, and falsely portraying it as temporary and necessary to counter GOP gerrymandering, when the true intent was pure, permanent, partisan gain.
As a result of the Dems' cynical, fraudulent, and deceptive campaigning, the voters approved the Democratic power grab.
Duh! California had one until they had to counter the undemocratic Texas congressional seat theft and election rigging.
If Texas had used their prior illegal gerrymandered map and not done Trump's little scheme to snatch five extra MAGA Republican seats, then California would have done nothing. The nonpartisan California map would be in force today. Same with Virginia.
California didn't have to do anything, and wasn't going to, until one isolated bad actor, Newsom, in an attempt to try to campaign for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, made the mistake of trying to push partisan gerrymandering.
California did not "have to" counter Texas redistricting. It was completely unnecessary, unethical, and stupid politically, though it may have benefitted Newsom personally. We could have done the right thing and kept our independent commission. Which would have been worse for the Democrats in the house, perhaps, but better for the people of California in that we would have fairly drawn districts.
It's also worth pointing out that what Texas did was (1) necessary because of Voting Rights Act issues, and (2) did not overturn an independent commission established by the votes, the way CA did. So what CA did was far worse.
Finally, it is far from clear that CA Democrats wouldn't have done their power grab anyway. As proof of this, the original proposal only went into effect if the Texas one did, but the CA Dems decided to remove that clause, so it will go into effect regardless. A pure power grab.
As someone who claims to think partisan gerrymandering is wrong, do you really find that defense of Texas convincing? The thin pretense of there being a “VRA issue” comes from a Trump DOJ memo, and lower courts tried to deny it. The only way SCOTUS was able to preserve it was to redefine the actions of Texas as a partisan gerrymander. That “independent commission” you mention is no such thing, it’s a back up commission in case the legislature fails to draw a map, and even then is made up of partisan executive office holders.
This is what I mean; if this mattered to you on principle why do you feel compelled to offer such a feeble defense of Texas doing the same thing? There’s a good faith discussion to be had about whether it’s right to treat this as a national issue, but if the only problem you have with the California and Virginia vote is that it hurts republicans then there’s nothing more to say.
"California did not "have to" counter Texas redistricting."
Really? Yeah they did. They had to counter the blatant theft of five Democratic congressional seats by Trump and the MAGA Texans.
The other reason is Negative Reenforcement.
We showed the thieving Republicans they're no longer permitted to run wild over our democracy without push back from our side.
When your dog shits on your best rug, you rub his nose in it and throw him outside.
The Dems rubbed the MAGA Republican's noses in their shit.
Yes, every state should have an independent commission. And it should be a state-by-state process.
Ok but actually defend that please. If political parties are using gerrymandering to distort the outcome of national elections for a states delegation, that makes the resulting legislature unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. It’s a national problem, and the logic of escalation of this arms race is structural, it’s not due to isolated bad actors.
It is due to isolated bad actors. Newsom, for instance, is an isolated bad actor who created partisan gerrymandering in California. He didn't have to do that. He sacrificed the people of California for the benefit of his own party, putting party over country.
What you're missing is that voters hate gerrymandering and punish parties for doing it. So the "logic of escalation of this arms race" has a built-in brake. A party that gerrymanders less wins votes because of that.
I don’t see how you can make this argument when both the Virginia and Californian gerrymanders were instituted with referenda, which is more than can be said for Texas. The idea that voters hate this and will punish it electorally is wishful thinking on your part.
And indeed, how can they punish one party when it’s practiced by both? You continue to frame this as if what California and Virginia are doing exist in a vacuum. Newsom never would have proposed a mid decade redraw (not “created”, it was the voters that made the new map possible) if the RNC and the Trump admin didn’t pursue a policy of compelling as many Republican run states as possible to redraw their maps first.
The chain of cause and effect here couldn’t be more explicit. Dems have proposed ending gerrymandering nationwide for years. They only started voting in these new maps after what Texas did, and even then tried to get Texas to back down first. Even now the Democratic Party maintains their position of ending partisan redistricting, and these new maps in California and Virginia were designed to be temporary unlike the Republican led effort. If you truly believe that the voters will vote against the party that gerrymanders more, it should be obvious which party they would punish and which one they would reward
I also just wanted to briefly respond to your Iran comment - the Iran war was absolutely necessary, and Trump gains a lot by it. First, it should be clear to anyone in the future that other presidents failed to act when it was necessary, but Trump did the hard but necessary thing. To the extent Trump cares about his legacy and being seen as having the balls to do what no one else could - which is very much part of his identity - this is a win for him.
From a more practical point, the whole world is in danger from Iran's imminent nukes that Obama allowed them to create. In particular, Jews are, and of course Trump's beloved daughter is Jewish.
Iran has repeatedly made comments about wanting to kill all the Jews, destroy Israel, and destroy America. To the extent that Trump wants to protect the country, his daughter, and Jews in general, he benefits from destroying Iran's capability to kill Jews.
You need to stop pretending you have your own political opinions. From every single of your comments here, you support anything good for the conservatives and disagree with anything good for liberals. You clearly chose your side and are playing for your team.
Because I'm against killing Jews?
My views are a gallimaufry of opinions! As examples of more or less liberal views, I support higher taxes on the wealthy, LGBT rights, fighting global warming, trust-busting by breaking up all large companies, full drug, gambling, and sex work legalization, national health care, troops on the ground in Ukraine, and a ban on AI and social media.
I have some more conservative views on other topics as well, like immigration or gun rights.
Really strong piece, Nate.
Funny how the MAGA Republicans have suddenly come to think partisan gerrymandering is a bad thing. How is it they said nothing when Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, and soon to be Florida did mid decade gerrymandering?
Looks like MAGA Republicans hate it when the Democratic voters give them a taste of their own gerrymandering medicine.
BTW - If the Republicans really want to stop this kind of egregious gerrymandering, they can join the Democratic congressional side of the aisle and pass the For the People Act. The law aims to prohibit partisan gerrymandering. This kind of reform has been on the table for a decade.
The Republicans vote against it every single time. But now they're crying. Boo Hoo.
They only think its bad when Democrats do it.
Mr. Silver makes a solid point that gerrymandering is not going away soon. But that should not stop us from considering alternatives outside of that box. Ranked choice voting (RCV) would not eliminate the effects of gerrymandering, but it would mitigate the evils of winner takes all. The Fair Representation Act, introduced repeatedly since 2017, would mandate RCV with 3–5 member districts for U.S. House elections. Not a cure but an effective treatment for what ails us.
Ultimately, my point is that redistricting is NOT a two-player game.
It's a THREE-player game!
The third player is the voters. And when either party gerrymanders, it hurts the voters.
It's complicated. For example, it would be VERY difficult to draw a massachusetts map that had even one Republican district, because Republicans and Democrats are spread pretty evenly around the state.
Calling it "unilateral disarmament" ignores that there aren't just two sides here, there are three. Quitting gerrymandering is not "disarmament" - it's refusing to shoot the third side - the voters!
Both parties are united in shooting the voters. It's not good. It's also bad politics, since voters like not being shot.
"I think it goes without saying that even if Republicans “started it”, we’re locked into a race-to-the-bottom now given extraordinarily high levels of partisanship."
I'm sorry but come on; we know that the 2020 Census was screwed up pretty badly in a way that netted reliably Blue states a lot of seats over Red ones. Ensuring that fewer voters get more electoral power over a paperwork error is not "democracy." I don't think that you can accurately frame this current redistricting fight without the epochal foul-up that was the Pandemic Census.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-undercount-overcount-rates-by-state.html
Also, I wanted to comment on the "unilateral disarmament" model. This model assumes two sides, Dems and the GOP, each trying to gain seats at the other's expense. It's inaccurate, because it ignores the third side - the voters!
For example, here in California, the Dems recently got rid of the independent commission the voters set up (against the Dems' wishes!)
The Dems benefit, the GOP loses out, but who really suffers? The voters, who now have less fair districts. It's a mistake to conflate the voters with one of the two parties - they are a third group, with different interests than either party.
Another good example is the "jungle primary" that California set up a while back. Both the Dems and the GOP came out against it, because it takes power away from the parties. The voters supported it, and it won!
Pretty sure this guy is a bot.
Lol what. Because I'm against redistricting? Nope, just a guy and a longtime fan of Nate's sharing my views.
There is really no simple fix to gerrymandering. Citizen redistricting might be better than a state legislature, but maybe not. The problem originates from the UK's Westminster plans from centuries ago. Single member districts, with the candidate getting the most wins (plurality winner).
In combination with the US two party system, which is a failure, is undemocratic, and is the source of many of the current political extremes, we have leaders of both parties who put party about everything.
No solution to selecting better federal and state legislators is perfect. But the US continues in many states with closed primaries. And a fear by both major parties that ranked choice voting will take away power from the political bosses who run both parties. RCV and open primaries are steps forward but the end of single member legislative races needs to change.
The real powerful force for change is the move by many voters away from either major party. In many states, unaffiliated or independent voters have a larger percentage than either party. And these are the voters who are not sheep, who are not voting like zombies for the political choice of party leaders and zealots. The population of unaffiliated voters is growing. What political group will take advantage of this transition.
If Democratic leaders invite unaffiliated voters into the Democratic primary tent with ranked choice voting, the candidate moving forward to November general election will likely tilt toward many but not all Democratic policies and perspectives. And then more Democrats will win in November.
But these Democrats will not always be extreme progressives. So the Democratic leaders would rather lose with an extremist than win with a moderate.
Too often, pollsters act as if there are only two possible political groups: Dems and Maggots. They should be looking to determine the views of unaffiliated voters in the 10-15 key states. National polls dilute the significance of polls and the likely outcome of political contests.
There is a simple fix. It's called multi-member districts. It solves all the problems.