Congressional districts for the US House of Representatives are redrawn after every census that takes place every decade. The next census is due in 2030. Each state has its own rules for how to draw the maps but in many states, especially those controlled by Republicans, the lines are drawn in strange ways just so that it gives a big advantage to their party. As a result, the percentage of Republicans who are elected to Congress from each state well exceed the percentage of votes that they get.
But Republicans are jittery that their current razor-thin majority in Congress will be lost in the 2026 mid-term elections, so states like Texas and elsewhere abruptly decided to redraw their maps midway through the decade to give Republicans even more seats. In retaliation, California governor Gavin Newsom decided to do the same thing in California to offset the Texas move. Currently the state’s districts are drawn by an independent commission so as to have fairness.
As a result, on election day November 4th, California voters will vote Proposition 50, a referendum that seeks to do away with the existing congressional district maps and replace it with a new one that favors Democrats but will be in effect only until the next census in 2030 requires the drawing of new maps. The referendum asks voters to essentially take a regressive step and approve a gerrymandered map that favors Democrats.
While many Democrats do not like this change, they feel it is necessary to fight fire with fire, that if Republicans are going to rig elections in states where they are the majority, Democrats should do the same.
The Guardian asked voters how they felt about California’s Proposition 50. While many expressed distaste, or outright disgust, with gerrymandering – the practice of redrawing congressional seats to guarantee representation for one party – many said they felt the new proposal was the only way to ensure fair representation in Congress.
“I have always been happy about California’s lack of gerrymandering and I hope that one day, every state will have independent commissions to create congressional districts,” Mars Moro, 60, an accountant at a California biotech company reliant on endangered grants from the National Institutes of Health, wrote. “But right now, with Trump’s attempt to rig the midterms in 2026, I believe that Newsom is doing the right thing. Our republic hangs in the balance and we must do everything we can to prevent a full autocratic takeover.”
Tara Noone, a psychotherapist from Albany, said while she generally thinks gerrymandering is “appalling”, it would be “foolish not to redistrict when there is a direct request from the White House and direct effort in red states to redistrict in order to give the GOP more seats in the House”.
“When the effort to tilt elections for a one-party permanent majority is transparent, explicit and unapologetic, we must act,” Noone, who has a “Yes on 50” sign in her yard, wrote. “Not just for ourselves but for all those voters in Texas who have been completely disenfranchised by a gerrymandering that neutralizes their votes. I have to hold my nose to vote for this one, but I absolutely will vote for it and feel safe doing so given the sunset provision.”
Meghan Diggins agreed with the sense of displeasure at being at this political juncture, but said she felt it was the “right thing to do considering that in my review, it certainly seems like Donald Trump is trying to take over the country”.
“I disagree with almost every single thing the man has done since he sat down at the Oval Office again,” Diggins, 59, said. “Even though I think gerrymandering is completely wrong and it’s ridiculous it’s not been stopped prior to now, it’s the only way to fight back for the gerrymandering he is pushing in red states.”
This seems like a political version of Gresham’s Law that says that “bad money drives out good”.
For example, if there are two coins in circulation containing metal of different value, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable coin based on the inherent value of its component metals will gradually disappear from circulation.
In this context, thanks to the blatant efforts by Republican controlled states to gerrymander well beyond the normal levels of doing so, even those states (like California) that had sought to move away from that unsavory practice are also doing so, if only temporarily.
I agree with the people quoted in the article and have already voted ‘Yes’ on the referendum, despite my disapproval of gerrymandering in general. When it comes to dealing with Trump and the Republicans, you cannot take the high road because they have absolutely no scruples. You have to find ways to nullify their destruction of the country and the first step is to take back the majority in the House of Representatives.
What I would love to see is voters being so fed up with how bad Trump and the Republicans are, with all their hateful racism, homophobia, misogyny, and anti-semitism, and their applalling abuse of federal legal power, that despite the gerrymandering, those Republican states still lose seats. Apart from his awful policies, Trump is so immature that any sensible adult should be repulsed that a president could act in that way. Now he has got enamored with the possibilities posed by AI-generated images and videos. On his Truth Social account he has posed a video of Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents while he looks on. In others, he is shown flying a fighter jet and dumping excrement on protestors. It is astoundingly childish.
If the Republicans suffer major losses even in red states that they gerrymandered, that would really send a message. But that is too much to hope for. I fear that Republicans are now a Trump cult and too locked into their tribal mentality and will vote for their party however bad they get. Many will even delight in such puerile behavior because they think it ‘owns the libs’. The best that can be hoped for is that some people who have voted for Republicans in the past and may have been thinking of doing so again may decide to not vote all. Abandoning their tribal loyalty and voting for Democrats may be too big a step for them to take. But I doubt that there will be enough of such people to significantly sway the results.
It will send a message, but the message Magats will receive is that the elections were rigged and they could not possibly have lost in places where they’d always won before. They think even elections where they win were still rigged against them, and they will never let that narrative go whenever they lose.
Fwiw, I voted for Prop 50 last week. But I’ve been getting flooded by scaremongering mail, email and tv ads (when I watch tv) lying about it and claiming its sunset clause won’t end it. Seeing all the money being thrown at the No on 50 campaign just makes me more certain it’s the right move to make, since it’s clearly scaring the money-filled pants off the Rs.
My biggest concern over the coming midterms is, aside from all the active vote suppression, that Dominion voting systems, whose machines were used in around half of the country’s precincts in recent elections, has been bought by a Cheato-supporting Republican who has renamed it Liberty Vote. I can’t help but be leery of anything with “Liberty” in the title that’s run by Republicans. Including insurance.
North Carolina legislators just passed a law to further gerrymander one of the worst gerrymandered states in the US. Though the voters in NC are closely divided between democrats and republicans, the House of Representative delegation consists of 10 republicans and 4 democrats. The further gerrymander was to rob democrats of 1 of the present seats. How does this split fairly represent the residents of NC? IT DOESN’T! It should be totally illegal to gerrymander. PERIOD. Though if I were a citizen in California, I would definitely vote YES on Proposition 50. Until gerrymandering is eliminated and fair representation based on historical voting patterns is implemented, democratic-led states have no choice but to play as dirty as republican-led states.
I generally live by “I shall not become who I hate” so I would likely vote NO (I cant vote, so I can afford to be a purist -- I have a feeling the superposition of the particles in my brain would collapse to make me vote YES if I could vote though).
And the above really is why I would vote NO. If a majority of the country believes that all the above is OK or atleast not more important than their tax break or the economy or the countries security or whatever idiotic fake justification they come up with , then the country is screwed anyway -- might as well keep my principles.
Deepak @3, your premise is wrong. The majority of the country does not believe “that all the above is OK …”. Republican politicians know that. They gerrymander precisely because they want to be in power anyway.
One thing to remember is that the proposal is temporary. Even if passed, in 2030 California reverts to its normal districting procedures.
I spent an afternoon phone-banking for this (because California is doing what Washington can’t, unless someone can come up with a way to claim that the year 2026 ends with 1). I’m also writing to California voters via Vote Forward.
When I was phone banking, those who answered the call and didn’t disconnect before I finished my first sentence (explaining that I am a volunteer for the Democratic party and I am *not* calling to ask for money) were either in support or undecided but leaning towards supporting. I may have gotten 1-2 people to feel more comfortable about supporting the proposition.
@Jörg
Take Texas -- maybe you could make a case that if there was no gerrymander , some house seats would switch. But what is your answer to why the senators and the governor is Republican (no gerrymander applies here -- yes voter suppression too , yes all the policies that make it harder for poor people to vote, but still a sizable number of people vote Republican). Either the voting majority in Texas agrees with Republican policies (racism, homophobia, misogyny, and anti-semitism) OR they are ok with it in comparison to having Democrats running the state (higher taxes! open borders! loss of jobs! ..).
Its the same old 80% or whatever number of Americans support the right to choose and a good number of the same people will vote for a virulently anti-choice politician -- Citizens not believing something is ok is irrelevant if they vote Republican.
Regarding comments expressing hope the GOP loses seats in spite of the increased gerrymandering, that just may come to pass for simple reasons. The main reason is due to the fact that so many Americans (including politicians and media types) are innumerate.
Perhaps people forget the process behind gerrymandering is “pack and crack”. That is, packing as many people of the other party into as few districts as possible, leaving room for the other districts to achieve higher percentages of voters in your party. So if we have a state that is split 50/50 and there are four districts, we pack as many of the others into one district, leaving ourselves a majority in the other three. But here’s the gotcha: suppose we have 20 districts and we have already successfully gerrymandered the map to give us 15 of those seats, packing the remaining 5 with voters from the other party. If we have indeed packed those 5 districts, but we want to increase our 15 to, say 18, the undesired people in those 3 districts have to be moved elsewhere and replaced with people from our party because the total number of voters hasn’t changed. That means that the margins in the original 15 have to fall, making them more competitive. Maybe those districts don’t have a 6 or 8 point advantage anymore, they have 3 or 5 points now. But if you add to that an election where it is clear that the majority of people are mad at the party doing the gerrymandering, the decreased margin can become a fatal liability. There is a smaller hurdle for the opposing party to clear. It’s a consequence of basic greed. How thinly can you slice the bologna before it shreds?
That is the outcome I’d like to see in TX and NC. I don’t know whether or not the CA map is particularly gerrymandered (I suspect that it is not, while the gerrymandering in TX and NC is legendary). In that case, the temporary CA counter-gerrymander could be quite effective at its stated purpose.
@jimf
A combination of
1. You take out the undesired from the 5 and pack them into the 2 remaining (if genuinely the original 15 have too low a margin)
2. You make more people ineligible to vote , retaining your margins where you needed to redistribute
takes care of your problem if sufficient people dont switch their votes
@ 4 Jörg
Those who did not vote in the last election had a choice: vote against fascism, or not-vote. They chose to not-vote. Their discomfort with fascism is not strong enough to get them to the polls. Describing them as not ok with it is a stretch.
@8 Deepak Shetty
Your #1 may be practically impossible to do, depending on how good you were at the original gerrymander. If it was a half-assed job, then, yes, it may be possible to skim a bit more, but I have a hard time believing that people would rig districts with a certain map, knowing they could do “better”.
Your #2 is a separate issue from the re-gerrymander. As such, one has to assume that they would do voter suppression anyway, regardless of the re-gerrymander, and therefore it does not change the mathematics of the re-gerrymander (and in fact, voter suppression pretty much has been legalized, thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court).