Gerrymandering & Redistricting

Politicians choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians — partisan gerrymandering distorts elections, suppresses competition, and the Supreme Court said it won't stop it, leaving reform to the states.

Last updated: March 11, 2026

Domain

Governance → Elections → District Drawing & Representation

Position

Partisan gerrymandering is the most powerful tool for rigging elections in America — it lets the party that controls redistricting predetermine outcomes before a single vote is cast. Independent redistricting commissions eliminate this, and every state that has adopted one has produced fairer, more competitive maps.

In the 2024 cycle, Republicans fully controlled the drawing of 191 congressional districts (44%) compared to just 75 for Democrats — a structural advantage baked into the map before campaigning even begins. The Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that federal courts cannot strike down partisan gerrymanders, declaring them a “political question” beyond judicial reach — even while acknowledging they may be “incompatible with democratic principles.” That decision shifted the entire fight to state courts and state ballot initiatives, where 20 states now use some form of independent or bipartisan redistricting commission.

Key Terms

  • Gerrymandering: The deliberate manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage one party over another. Named after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, whose 1812 redistricting plan created a district shaped like a salamander. Modern gerrymandering uses sophisticated mapping software and voter data to draw districts with surgical precision — predetermining election outcomes years in advance.

  • Cracking and Packing: The two core techniques of gerrymandering. Cracking splits the opposing party’s voters across multiple districts so they can’t win a majority anywhere. Packing concentrates the opposing party’s voters into a few districts where they win by absurd margins (80%+), wasting their votes. Both techniques convert a statewide vote share into a wildly disproportionate seat share.

  • Efficiency Gap: A mathematical measure of partisan gerrymandering that calculates the difference between the two parties’ “wasted votes” — votes cast for the losing candidate in each district plus votes for the winning candidate beyond the 50% needed to win. A large efficiency gap means one party is systematically wasting more votes than the other, indicating a gerrymandered map. Used as evidence in court cases to quantify distortion.

  • Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC): A nonpartisan or bipartisan body that draws electoral district boundaries instead of the state legislature. Commissioners are typically selected through an application process, screened for conflicts of interest, and required to follow criteria like compactness, community of interest, and partisan fairness. California, Arizona, Michigan, and Colorado are prominent examples.

Scope

  • Focus: How partisan gerrymandering distorts representation, the evidence from states that have adopted independent commissions, and the reform pathways available after Rucho
  • Timeframe: Post-2010 redistricting cycle through the current maps, with emphasis on 2020 redistricting outcomes and the 2024 election results
  • What this is NOT about: Whether redistricting itself is inherently corrupt — districts must be redrawn after each census. The argument is that who draws them matters enormously, and giving that power to the politicians who benefit from the outcome is an indefensible conflict of interest

The Case

1. Gerrymandering Predetermines Elections Before a Vote Is Cast

The Point: In gerrymandered states, the party that draws the map can convert a minority of votes into a majority of seats — or guarantee itself a supermajority even in a state where the electorate is closely divided.

The Evidence:

  • In Wisconsin’s 2018 state assembly elections, Democrats won 53% of the statewide vote but only 36% of seats (36 of 99). Republicans won 47% of the vote but held 63 seats — a 27-point gap between vote share and seat share caused by one of the most aggressive gerrymanders in U.S. history (Brennan Center / AP analysis).
  • In North Carolina’s 2024 congressional races, Republican mapmakers drew a 10-4 Republican advantage in a state where statewide elections are routinely decided by 1-2 points. The map was drawn after the state supreme court — flipped to a Republican majority — reversed its own prior ruling striking down the previous gerrymander (Brennan Center, 2024).
  • Republicans controlled the drawing of 191 congressional districts (44%) used in 2024 elections, compared to just 75 (17%) for Democrats. The remaining districts were drawn by commissions, courts, or divided governments (Brennan Center, 2024).

The Logic: When a party that wins 47% of the vote ends up with 63% of the seats, the election isn’t functioning as a democratic feedback mechanism — it’s functioning as a rubber stamp for a predetermined outcome. Gerrymandering doesn’t just give one party an edge; it makes most elections noncompetitive. In heavily gerrymandered states, the only election that matters is the primary, which pushes candidates toward their base’s extremes rather than toward the median voter. The result is polarization by design.

Why It Matters: The fundamental promise of democracy is that elections translate voter preferences into representation. Gerrymandering breaks that promise. When the map is drawn so that one party can’t lose regardless of how voters feel, elections become performances rather than choices. Voters in packed or cracked districts know their vote won’t change the outcome — and participation suffers accordingly.

2. Racial Gerrymandering Hides Behind Partisan Gerrymandering

The Point: After Rucho closed the door on federal partisan gerrymandering claims, racial gerrymandering has become easier to disguise — because in racially segregated states, targeting voters by party and targeting them by race produce identical maps.

The Evidence:

  • In Alabama, a Republican-drawn map packed Black voters — who are 27% of the state’s population — into a single majority-Black congressional district out of seven, even though proportional representation would yield two majority-Black districts. The Supreme Court ordered a second majority-Black district in Allen v. Milligan (2023), finding the map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Supreme Court, 2023).
  • Louisiana and Georgia faced similar Section 2 challenges for maps that diluted Black voting power by cracking Black communities across districts. Louisiana was ordered by a federal court to create a second majority-Black district; Georgia’s map was challenged for splitting metro Atlanta’s Black population (Campaign Legal Center / Brennan Center, 2023–2024).
  • Legal scholars have documented that Rucho created a “gerrymandering loophole” — because partisan gerrymandering is nonjusticiable but racial gerrymandering is, legislators can draw racially targeted maps and defend them by claiming they were targeting Democrats, not Black voters. In states where Black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, the two categories are practically indistinguishable (NYU Law Review, 2024).

The Logic: Before Rucho, courts could examine whether a map was drawn with discriminatory intent — whether partisan or racial. Now, legislators can openly admit to partisan gerrymandering (which is legal) while achieving racial vote dilution as a byproduct. The only remaining check is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires proving racial impact rather than partisan intent. But as Shelby County gutted preclearance in 2013 and Rucho closed the federal partisan door in 2019, the available tools for challenging racially motivated maps have narrowed dramatically.

Why It Matters: Racial gerrymandering isn’t a separate problem from partisan gerrymandering — it’s the same problem in states where race and party affiliation overlap. Every Southern state where Black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic faces this dynamic. Fixing partisan gerrymandering through independent commissions automatically addresses racial gerrymandering in these states, because a commission that draws fair partisan maps also draws racially fair ones.

3. Independent Commissions Work — Every State That Has One Produces Fairer Maps

The Point: States that have adopted independent redistricting commissions consistently produce more competitive, more representative, and more proportional maps than states where legislators draw their own districts.

The Evidence:

  • California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission produced maps with 13 competitive congressional districts (Harris vote shares between 45% and 55%), split nearly evenly between the parties. Under the previous legislature-drawn maps, competitive districts were far rarer (PPIC, 2024).
  • Michigan’s independent commission, created by a 2018 ballot initiative that passed with 61% of the vote, produced maps that led to the first competitive state legislative elections in decades — and Democrats won unified control of the state government for the first time in 40 years in 2022, reflecting the state’s actual political leanings (Michigan IRC / Common Cause).
  • As of 2025, 20 states use some form of nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commission. States that adopted commissions through ballot initiatives — Colorado, Michigan, California, Arizona — have consistently produced maps rated as fairer by nonpartisan metrics than maps drawn by legislatures in comparable states (Campaign Legal Center / American Academy of Arts & Sciences).

The Logic: The evidence is remarkably consistent: commissions produce competitive districts; legislatures produce safe seats. This isn’t surprising — legislators drawing their own districts have a direct conflict of interest. It’s like letting a defendant pick their own jury. Independent commissions remove that conflict by putting the process in the hands of citizens who are screened for partisan ties and required to follow fairness criteria. The result is maps where elections are actually competitive, which means representatives actually have to respond to voters rather than to primary electorates alone.

Why It Matters: Commission reform is the single most impactful structural change available at the state level. It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, it doesn’t require federal legislation, and it can be enacted through ballot initiative in most states — bypassing the very legislators who benefit from the status quo. Every state that has done this has gotten better maps. There is no counterexample.

4. Gerrymandering Drives Polarization — It’s Not Just About Seats

The Point: The most corrosive effect of gerrymandering isn’t partisan imbalance — it’s the elimination of competitive elections, which drives elected officials toward extremes and away from compromise.

The Evidence:

  • In 2024, only about 40 of 435 House seats (roughly 9%) were genuinely competitive — meaning the outcome was in doubt going into Election Day. The vast majority were predetermined by the district’s partisan lean, drawn during redistricting (Cook Political Report / Brennan Center).
  • Research published in the American Political Science Review found that legislators elected from gerrymandered safe districts vote more ideologically extreme than legislators from competitive districts, and are less responsive to median-voter preferences (APSR / Brennan Center analysis).
  • States with independent commissions — California, Arizona, Michigan — have produced legislatures with more moderate members and higher rates of bipartisan legislation than comparable gerrymandered states, because representatives in competitive districts must appeal beyond their party’s base (PPIC / Campaign Legal Center).

The Logic: When a Republican wins a district drawn to be R+15, the only election that matters is the primary — and primaries reward ideological purity, not governance. The same is true for D+20 districts. Gerrymandering creates a legislature full of people who have no incentive to compromise and every incentive to perform for their base. The result is the dysfunction Americans see in Congress: government shutdowns, inability to pass basic legislation, and representatives who are rewarded for obstruction rather than problem-solving. This isn’t because individual legislators are bad people — it’s because the system’s incentive structure, created by gerrymandering, selects for extremism.

Why It Matters: The polarization argument is the most underappreciated case for redistricting reform. Even people who don’t care about partisan balance should care about functional governance. If your representative has no competitive general election, they’re accountable to primary voters and donors — not to you. Independent commissions create competitive elections, which create accountability, which creates the possibility of governance.

Counterpoints & Rebuttals

Counterpoint 1: “Both parties gerrymander — this isn’t a one-sided problem”

Objection: Democrats gerrymander in states they control — Maryland, Illinois, New York. Focusing on Republican gerrymandering is selective outrage. If you’re going to reform the system, acknowledge that both sides do it. Otherwise, it’s a partisan power grab disguised as reform.

Response: Both parties absolutely gerrymander, and independent commissions should replace all partisan map-drawing — including Democratic gerrymanders. Maryland’s congressional map was one of the most extreme Democratic gerrymanders in the country until a court struck it down. Illinois remains egregiously gerrymandered by Democrats. The “both sides” observation is correct — and it’s the strongest argument for independent commissions, not against them. Commissions don’t advantage either party; they advantage voters. If you genuinely believe both parties gerrymander, you should support the reform that prevents both from doing so.

Follow-up: “But in practice, commission reform tends to be pushed in red states — it’s Democrats trying to break Republican advantages”

Second Response: Commission ballot initiatives have passed with bipartisan voter support in red, purple, and blue states — Michigan (61%), Colorado (71%), and Arizona (56%) all approved commissions through voter initiatives with cross-party support. California’s commission was championed by a Republican governor (Schwarzenegger). The reason reform is more visible in red states is that Republicans controlled more redistricting after 2010, so there were more Republican gerrymanders to challenge. But the principle is the same everywhere: politicians shouldn’t draw their own districts. If Democrats proposed repealing California’s commission to gerrymander the maps themselves, the same arguments against it would apply.

Counterpoint 2: “Gerrymandering is too complicated for average citizens to understand — politicians have the expertise”

Objection: Drawing district maps requires understanding federal and state law, the Voting Rights Act, population distribution, geographic constraints, and community of interest standards. Independent commissions put amateurs in charge of a technically complex process. Legislatures have the staff, legal expertise, and institutional knowledge to do this properly.

Response: Legislatures do have the technical capacity — and they use it to gerrymander with surgical precision. That’s the problem. The “expertise” argument is like saying foxes should guard henhouses because they understand poultry better than farmers. Independent commissions don’t lack technical resources — they hire professional demographers, legal counsel, and mapping experts. What they lack is the conflict of interest. California’s commission employed full-time legal and technical staff and produced maps that experts rated as among the fairest in the country. The issue was never capacity; it was accountability.

Follow-up: “But commissions are still political — the commissioners have their own biases”

Second Response: That’s why commission design matters. The best commissions screen applicants for partisan ties, require bipartisan agreement on maps, and mandate public transparency in the drawing process. California’s commission requires 3 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 3 independents/minor-party members, with final maps requiring support from each group. Is it perfect? No. But the alternative — giving the party in power unilateral authority to draw maps that guarantee its own reelection — is demonstrably worse by every fairness metric. The question isn’t “are commissions perfect?” It’s “are they better than the status quo?” The answer, from every state that’s tried it, is yes.

Counterpoint 3: “The Supreme Court got it right — gerrymandering is a political question that courts shouldn’t decide”

Objection: Rucho correctly held that there’s no judicially manageable standard for determining when partisan gerrymandering goes “too far.” Every redistricting involves political considerations. If courts start striking down maps for being too partisan, unelected judges will be drawing the maps — that’s even less democratic than letting legislatures do it.

Response: The efficiency gap, mean-median difference, and partisan symmetry measures all provide mathematically precise, reproducible metrics for identifying extreme gerrymanders — they’re used by political scientists and have been presented as evidence in multiple court cases. The “no manageable standard” argument was contested by four dissenting justices, including Justice Kagan, who wrote that the majority was “throwing up its hands” in the face of “the most serious and long-lasting form of vote dilution.” And the alternative to court intervention isn’t neutral — it’s the status quo, where one party rigs maps to entrench itself indefinitely. That’s not more democratic; it’s less.

Follow-up: “Even if courts could measure it, it’s not their job — this is a legislative issue”

Second Response: Then legislatures should solve it — by establishing independent commissions. That’s exactly the reform pathway Rucho left open: the majority opinion explicitly said that “state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” and that “Congress has the authority to address partisan gerrymandering through legislation.” The court didn’t say gerrymandering is fine; it said federal courts won’t fix it. The responsibility falls on legislatures, state courts, and voters through ballot initiatives. If you agree with Rucho that this is a political question, then you should support the political solution: independent commissions enacted through the political process.

Common Misconceptions

Misconception 1: “Gerrymandering only affects one party — whichever party is complaining just lost”

Reality: Both parties gerrymander where they can, and both should be stopped. After the 2020 redistricting, Republican-drawn maps were more numerous and more extreme on average (191 vs. 75 districts) because Republicans controlled more state legislatures. But Democratic gerrymanders in Maryland, Illinois, and New York were equally aggressive. The solution isn’t to let your side gerrymander “to be fair” — it’s to remove partisan map-drawing entirely. Independent commissions produce fairer maps regardless of which party is in power.

Misconception 2: “Geographic sorting — not gerrymandering — explains why districts are lopsided”

Reality: Geographic sorting is real — Democrats are concentrated in cities, which creates some natural “packing.” But peer-reviewed research using simulation models shows that geographic sorting alone explains only a fraction of the partisan imbalance in gerrymandered states. In Wisconsin, researchers generated thousands of randomly drawn, legally compliant maps — and virtually none produced the extreme pro-Republican skew of the actual map. The real map was an extreme outlier, which means gerrymandering, not geography, was the primary driver.

Misconception 3: “Majority-minority districts protect communities of color, so redistricting reform would hurt them”

Reality: This requires nuance. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires districts that give minority communities the opportunity to elect their preferred candidates, and independent commissions are required to comply with this law. California’s commission explicitly incorporates minority representation criteria. The concern is that some commissions might prioritize “competitiveness” over minority representation — but well-designed commissions balance both. The bigger threat to minority representation is partisan gerrymandering that cracks minority communities across districts, which is what Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia did until courts intervened.

Rhetorical Tips

Do Say

“Politicians are choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians. An independent commission takes the conflict of interest out of the process — that’s not radical; it’s common sense.” The “choosing their voters” line is the single most effective framing because it captures the absurdity immediately.

Don’t Say

“Republicans gerrymander” without also acknowledging that Democrats do it too. Leading with partisan framing invites a “both sides” deflection that derails the conversation. Instead say: “Both parties gerrymander where they can — that’s exactly why neither party should draw the maps.”

When the Conversation Goes Off the Rails

Come back to Wisconsin. “In 2018, Democrats won 53% of the votes and 36% of the seats. That’s not democracy — it’s map-rigging. And it’s fixable: every state with an independent commission produces fairer results.” Wisconsin is the clearest, most jarring example of vote-to-seat distortion, and it’s hard to argue that a 17-point gap is “just geography.”

Know Your Audience

  • Persuadable moderates: Lead with the polarization argument — gerrymandering eliminates competitive elections, which drives extremism and dysfunction. “If your representative has a safe seat, they don’t have to listen to you — they only have to survive their primary.” Moderates who are frustrated with Congress respond to this because it explains why government doesn’t work.
  • Informed allies: Focus on Rucho’s aftermath, the state-court pathway, and the racial gerrymandering loophole. The active fights are ballot initiatives for commissions in states that don’t have them and defending existing commissions from legislative rollback.
  • Hostile interlocutors: Use the “both sides” frame proactively: “Maryland and Illinois are gerrymandered by Democrats, and it’s wrong. Ohio and North Carolina are gerrymandered by Republicans, and it’s wrong. The fix is to take map-drawing away from all politicians. If you agree both sides do it, you should agree both sides should stop.” This disarms the partisan deflection.

Key Quotes & Soundbites

“In Wisconsin, Democrats won 53% of the votes and 36% of the seats. That’s not a close call — it’s a rigged map. And the Supreme Court said federal courts can’t fix it.”

“Only 40 out of 435 House seats were competitive in 2024. That means 91% of elections were decided before a single vote was cast — by the people who drew the map.”

“Politicians drawing their own districts is like students grading their own exams. Independent commissions take the conflict of interest out. Every state that’s adopted one has gotten fairer maps. There is no counterexample.”

“Both parties gerrymander where they can. That’s not an argument against reform — it’s the argument for reform. Neither party should draw the maps.”

  • Voting Rights & Voter Suppression — Gerrymandering is the structural companion to voter suppression: one manipulates who can vote, the other manipulates whether those votes matter (see: Voting Rights)
  • Citizens United & Campaign Finance — Dark money funds the campaigns of legislators who then draw maps to protect their own seats, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of unaccountable power (see: Citizens United & Campaign Finance)
  • Supreme Court Reform — Rucho v. Common Cause was a 5-4 decision; a differently structured court might revisit whether partisan gerrymandering is justiciable (see: Supreme Court Reform)

Sources & Further Reading