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Is there a fix for gerrymandering?

Is there a fix for gerrymandering?

Last updated on: April 30, 2026 at 6:38 am by Jane the Actuary

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Is there a fix for gerrymandering? 2026-04-30T06:38:20-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Right now, there’s an escalating tit-for-tat battle, with each of Republicans and Democrats accusing the other of being the instigator, over gerrymandering. As far as I can tell, Democrats used the excuse of a moderate increase in the number of GOP seats in Texas to produce extremely unrepresentative gerrymanders in California and now in Virginia, where the new map will . Before that, Illinois’s gerrymander was particularly egregious. I’m sure Democrats could point to bad examples from the Republican side, although the nature of Democrats’ concentration in dense urban areas means that Republican “Gerrymanders” often, if you don’t know the particulars of geography and voting patterns, look much more “normal” than the snake districts that Democrats produce, for example, in Illinois taking a majority of city voters and then stretching the district out far outside the urban or even suburban surroundings into, for example, areas like Kankakee.

But I’m more interested in thinking about the issue in a bigger picture way than debating the partisan elements of it.

Fix One: commission-based gerrymandering.

Is this really a sustainable fix? Some time ago, there was an effort to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot to create such a commission. The promoters collected the requisite number of signatures but the State courts rejected it because in Illinois the scope for what can placed on the ballot as an amendment through the signature process is very limited. In fact only one amendment ever succeeded through this process, back in 1980. But had courts ruled differently, it could have made a meaningful difference because the only way to change it would have been a supermajority vote, 60%. Something like the Virginia process, in which a 50% majority is all that’s needed, makes an amendment not particularly more meaningful than an ordinary law.

And even in the case of a “durable” amendment, it’s honestly not a “sure thing” that the neutral commission will actually be neutral. The biggest issue is “what is a bias-free district map?”

Is it a map where there are as many “competitive” districts as possible, that is, maximizing 50/50 districts even though it means that other districts might be very imbalanced?

Is it a map that attempts to draw districts so that, based on recent voting patterns, there would be a split in representation that is as similar as the number of seats permits, to the overall D vs R vote in the state?

Is it a map that draws district lines based purely on geography, that is, maximizing the degree to which districts keep towns or counties or geographically similar areas (e.g., towns in a river valley) together? I think this is what most of us think of as non-gerrymandered but that’s not going to fit the other two criteria.

Fix Two: proportional representation, or a hybrid model (e.g., Germany)

If the objective is truly to have “partisan fairness,” should we just abandon districts altogether? Should parties choose representatives from a “list” with that list selected at a party convention or through another process?

I suspect the knee-jerk reaction of many Americans is that they wouldn’t want to have to commit to a party rather than a person. They want to know which candidate they are voting for, and wouldn’t agree to having a party decide that, especially when the national party is known to be much more left-wing/right-wing than the average American. But at the same time, in places like Illinois, it’s already the case that districts are drawn to engineer a given partisan outcome. My representative doesn’t actually represent my local area at all! He represents Chicago, and we’re just along for the ride, so much so that generally speaking there are not credible Republican candidates contesting the election at all.

Perhaps an alternative is going all the way to a full-blown multiparty system, so that your choice of party is narrower than just a binary choice, and perhaps, were proportional representation implemented, it would be a natural by-product of the shift, because minor parties would no longer merely be spoilers. In any case, this would require a whole new constitutional structure.

The German system would be a sort of middle ground: you get compact geographically-defined districts with actual, known candidates, but then based on overall party success, extra representatives are added to make up any shortfall to have the outcome match the overall nationwide results. This would take away the incentive to gerrymander districts, at least not for purposes of partisan gain (revenge against individual lawmakers would still be a motivation, for instance the practice of redrawing boundaries to exclude that person’s house), but would still keep the concept of “individual districts” and perhaps make them more meaningful.

My personal choice would be this last option, and I’d love to see some state pilot this in their state legislature. But I don’t see any takers.

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