Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed into law new district lines that could net Republicans five U.S. House seats in Texas.
In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is moving forward with a plan for Californians to vote this November on overriding the state’s independent redistricting commission, imposing a new congressional map that could net five seats for Democrats.
Next up: the state legislature in Missouri has convened a special session to produce one more GOP-leaning seat there; Republicans in Indiana and Florida are also considering redistricting, in addition to Ohio, where the state’s map legally has to be redrawn. Democrats in Maryland could follow suit.
By November 2026, there will likely be few states where the majority party has not gerrymandered its congressional map to the greatest possible extent.
Before you ask: Yes, this is legal. Mid-decade redistricting is rare, but not prohibited nationwide. And the Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019 that even though partisan redistricting “leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” it does not violate any federal law or the Constitution, which means federal courts have no role in the matter.
Already, as it stands, U.S. House elections have become extraordinarily non-competitive: in 2024, only 37 out of 435 races were decided by fewer than five points. This latest round of gerrymandering will only supercharge that, potentially bringing us to a place where, every two years, the two parties compete — not for your votes, but to see who can carve up the congressional map most efficiently, so that the maximum number of their members can avoid needing to ask for votes.
So: That’s the problem. But here at Wake Up To Politics, I also like to shine some light on the solutions. For the past few weeks, I’ve been calling up a bunch of experts, asking them to sketch out a potential ceasefire to the gerrymandering wars. Today, for this week’s paid-subscriber column, I’m presenting five innovative proposals to curb partisan redistricting.
None of these proposals would advantage one party or the other; also, none of them would require a constitutional amendment, just an act of Congress. But all of them are pathways to reduce partisan gerrymandering and breathe competition back into congressional elections. Along the way, you’ll learn a lot about the history of redistricting, how we got to this point, different systems that have been used in the past, and about some inspiring activists agitating for change.
I’ll be honest with you up front: I see no chance that any of these solutions will be adopted before the midterms.1 But, at some point, after some amount of biennial redistricting, I do think it’s possible that one or both parties — or enough Americans — will grow tired of the continual slicing and dicing. When that point comes, these solutions will be there waiting for them.
1. Cutting a cake
Imagine you’re down to the last sliver of cake, and two people want it. What do you to do? Even schoolchildren know the answer: one person cuts the cake, and then the other person gets to pick which piece they take. Our first proposal imagines taking this universal scenario, and applying it to redistricting.