Florida redistricting plan is next front in gerrymandering wars
On April 27, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposed a new congressional map that would shift four U.S. House seats from favoring Democrats to favoring Republicans. The Florida legislature will consider the map at a special session this week, marking the latest front in a nationwide redistricting war between red and blue states.
The United States can end gerrymandering for good by making a national shift to proportional representation. Read on to learn more.
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Which states have redrawn their congressional maps so far?
The current wave of gerrymandering began last summer when, at President Trump’s request, Texas lawmakers redrew their state’s congressional map to increase the number of Republican-leaning seats.
In 2025, lawmakers in Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio redrew their maps to favor Republicans, and voters in California passed a ballot measure to redraw their maps in favor of Democrats. Last week, Virginia voters passed a ballot measure to do the same. (The new maps in Virginia and Missouri may ultimately be blocked by courts and voters, respectively.)
Mid-decade redistricting on this scale has traditionally been extremely rare, but partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. Lawmakers have been manipulating district lines to benefit their party for centuries.
How can we end the gerrymandering wars?
This partisan race to the bottom shows the limits of state-by-state anti-gerrymandering reforms. 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. To solve it, the United States needs a national solution: a shift to proportional representation.
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.
Reintroduced last year by Representatives Don Beyer and Jamie Raskin, the Fair Representation Act (FRA) would achieve proportional representation and end partisan gerrymandering by:
- Combining ranked choice voting and multi-member districts
- Establishing uniform redistricting rules
- Banning mid-decade redistricting
Proportional representation would effectively neuter any attempt to gerrymander. Multi-member districts would mean fewer lines to draw and, therefore, fewer opportunities to gerrymander. The remaining district lines would become far less important. Drawing members of one party into unfavorable districts would no longer deny them a voice – they would 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.
Florida’s congressional map with proportional representation
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 (see the map for Florida here). 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.
With the Fair Representation Act, tactics like the Florida redistricting special session would become a thing of the past. To learn more about the FRA, visit this page and check out the video below.
