California passes Prop 50 – but the gerrymandering wars need a national solution
On Tuesday, California voters overwhelmingly passed Prop 50, which would change California’s congressional map to increase the number of Democratic representatives. This vote comes amid a nationwide gerrymandering war between red and blue states – a war that could be solved with a nationwide shift to proportional representation.
Which states have redrawn their congressional maps so far?
The current wave of gerrymandering began this summer when, at President Trump’s request, Texas lawmakers redrew their state’s congressional map to increase the number of Republican-leaning seats. Since then, Republican lawmakers in Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have also redrawn maps. Blue states including New York, Illinois, and Maryland; blue-ish Virginia; and red states including Florida and Indiana, have all indicated they may follow suit.
Mid-decade redistricting on this scale is extremely rare, but toxic partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. Lawmakers have been manipulating district lines to benefit their party for centuries.
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How can we end the gerrymandering wars?
This partisan race-to-the-bottom shows the limits of state-by-state action on gerrymandering. Some pundits and politicians have even criticized individual states’ efforts to ban gerrymandering or institute independent redistricting commissions as a form of “unilaterally disarming.”
This is a national problem – and a national solution is needed.
Reintroduced this year by Representatives Don Beyer and Jamie Raskin, the Fair Representation Act (FRA) would end partisan gerrymandering by:
- Combining ranked choice voting and multi-member districts to achieve proportional representation
- Establishing uniform redistricting rules
- Banning mid-decade redistricting
Most democracies around the world already use a form of proportional representation. Different groups of voters are able to elect winners in proportion to their share of votes cast. For instance, if 60% of votes go to conservatives and 40% go to liberals, then about 60% of seats go to conservative candidates and 40% go to liberal candidates. Drawing members of one party into unfavorable districts would no longer deny them representation.
Proportional representation would effectively neuter any attempt to gerrymander. First, multi-member districts would mean fewer lines to draw and, therefore, fewer opportunities to gerrymander. Second, the remaining district lines become far less important. Drawing members of one party into unfavorable districts would no longer deny them a voice – they will still win seats in proportion to their share of the vote. Research has found that the Fair Representation Act would lead to fair partisan and racial representation, regardless of how district lines are drawn.
FairVote has developed sample congressional maps for each state should the FRA be implemented, showing the likely partisan outcomes of elections under this better system. We project a roughly equal share of seats for Republicans and Democrats nationwide. In other words, the FRA would dramatically increase competition and end gerrymandering without favoring either major party – the real winners are the voters.
Sample map for California’s congressional districts under the FRA
With the Fair Representation Act, measures like Prop 50 would become a thing of the past. To learn more about the FRA, visit this page and check out the video below.
