What Is Gerrymandering?

In the United States, representatives to state assemblies and the U.S. House of Representatives are determined by the voters within voting districts in each state. Unlike the boundaries between individual U.S. states, voting district boundaries are redrawn every 10 years to coincide with the U.S. Census. All districts within the state must have populations that are roughly equal to one another. Every time the districts are redrawn, gerrymandering becomes a popular topic in the media. But what is gerrymandering?

Gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, is the drawing of the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one party an unfair advantage over its rivals. In other words, gerrymandering can be used by office holders of the party in power to either spread voters from the opposing party across districts or to give a competitive edge to their own candidates. Alternatively, voters from the opposing party can be packed into a minority of voting districts to reduce the number of seats the opposing party can control. Gerrymandering has been condemned because it violates two basic tenets of electoral apportionment—compactness and equality of size of constituencies. The term is derived from the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose administration enacted a law in 1812 defining new state senatorial districts. The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans.

Many of the seats won at the national and state levels during the 2016 election were the result of at least some level of gerrymandering by both Democrats and Republicans. The most famous example concerns two districts in North Carolina (District 1 and District 12) which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled were unconstitutionally drawn along racial lines to increase the populations of African American majorities, effectively packing these voters into fewer districts. Another example involved a case in which a U.S. District Court determined that a map showing the state assembly voting districts of Wisconsin was unconstitutional because it was clearly drawn to benefit Republican candidates.

Several solutions have been devised to reduce the influence of gerrymandering. At a town hall meeting in Plymouth, Michigan, in March 2017, it was suggested that state officials should build replicas of voting districts with LEGO bricks to address the issue of compactness. If these constructions fell apart when they were held up for view, one could argue that the district’s gerrymandering was too extreme. In addition, compactness could be examined using mathematics and spatial analysis to determine the average distances between points of interest, such as urban centers or between the centers of voting districts and their edges. Another radical approach to solving the gerrymandering problem involves the concept of proportional allotment, where each congressional district would elect three to five representatives instead of one. This solution could represent a majority party’s win while preventing a winner-take-all situation, but it would also mean newer and bigger statehouses (and a larger U.S. Capitol building!) to handle the extra seating. Of the more practical solutions, one that shows promise involves shifting the responsibility of redrawing boundaries to independent commissions. Arizona, California, and Idaho already rely on independent commissions to produce voting district maps that are both just and fair.

All of which bring us to the topic of the 2026 midterm elections. Normally the districts involved in these elections would not be subject to such gerrymandering, but in 2025 U.S. Pres. Donald Trump endorsed a plan to redraw Texas’s maps in a way that would be favorable to Republicans, saying that the GOP was “entitled to five more seats.” Texas’s move set off a tit for tat around the country, with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, proposing a ballot initiative that would allow that state’s maps to be redrawn to create five seats that were likely to favor Democrats. The proposal was approved by voters in a November 2025 special election, with 64 percent of the vote. California and Texas were two of six states that changed their maps (the others being Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Utah). Four other states (Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington) introduced legislation to redraw their maps. Maryland’s plan did not make it out of the state legislature; but in April, Virginia voters approved a House map that could give Democrats an additional four seats. The following month the Virginia plan was struck down by the state’s supreme court, which held that the procedure under which the map had been approved by voters was in violation of the state’s constitution. Also in April, Florida’s legislature approved a new map of congressional districts proposed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. The plan could add as many as four Republican seats to the House of Representatives, but it faces a likely court challenge. The Florida Constitution prohibits redrawing boundaries for purely political gain.

On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana v. Callais, finding that the creation of two Black-majority districts in 2024 had violated Section 2 because it purposefully reduced the voting power of white citizens. (In 2023 a lower federal court had found that the existence of only one Black district following the national census of 2020 had violated Section 2 because it effectively reduced the voting power of Black citizens.) In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry delayed the state’s planned May primary election by two months to give the legislature time to redraw the maps, which would likely create two new Republican districts. Shortly thereafter the Tennessee legislature approved a new map that would eliminate that state’s only seat in the House of Representatives held by a Democrat. Other Southern states were expected to follow suit.