Can Gerrymandering Be Fixed? The Reforms That Are Already Working

Can gerrymandering be fixed? Yes — and in a growing number of states, it already has been. The fix has not come from one sweeping federal law but from independent redistricting commissions, state constitutional standards, and ballot initiatives that voters passed themselves. The honest caveat: no map-drawing system is immune to politics, and the reforms that last are the ones designed to survive a change in who holds power.

Start with the word itself. In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed off on a state senate district so contorted that a Boston newspaper drew wings and claws on it and called it a salamander. Gerry plus salamander. We have been living with the cartoon for more than two centuries, which should tell you something: this is not a modern partisan invention, and it is not the exclusive property of either party. Both have drawn maps to protect themselves, and both have discovered the same thing — a safe seat is a comfortable place to stop listening.

Why is gerrymandering so hard to fix?

Because the people who benefit from the maps are usually the people who draw them. In most states, redistricting is an ordinary piece of legislation, which means the legislators whose careers depend on district lines get to set those lines every ten years. There is no villain required for this to go badly. You only need ordinary human beings handed a tool that makes their own job safer.

The second reason is that the damage is slow. A gerrymandered map does not announce itself on election night. It works by making the general election irrelevant and the primary everything, which rewards the candidate who can thrill the most committed 12 percent of the electorate rather than persuade the other 88. Over a decade, that reshapes who runs, who wins, and who ever has a reason to cut a deal.

Can gerrymandering be fixed by the courts?

Partly — but not the federal ones, and that changed recently. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court held that claims of excessive partisan gerrymandering present political questions federal courts cannot resolve. The majority was blunt that this did not mean the practice was acceptable, and it pointed directly at the remedies that remain: state constitutions, state courts, and state-level reform.

That turned out to be more than a consolation prize. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the state’s congressional map under the state constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections. Other state courts have since done similar work under their own charters. The lesson is one most Americans never learned in civics class: your state constitution is often a sharper tool than the federal one, and it is far easier to amend.

What reforms are actually working?

Independent and citizen commissions. Arizona voters created an independent redistricting commission by ballot initiative in 2000, and the Supreme Court upheld it in 2015. California followed with Propositions 11 and 20, building a fourteen-member citizens commission split among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Roughly a dozen states now use some form of independent or bipartisan commission for congressional or legislative maps. They are not perfect. They are measurably better than letting incumbents pick their voters.

Rules written into the map itself. Commissions work best when they are handed real criteria: keep counties and communities whole, draw compact districts, and — this is the part that matters — explicitly forbid drawing for partisan advantage or incumbent protection. A commission without standards is just a different room with the same incentives.

Transparency. Modern mapping software used to be a black box available to a few consultants. It is now free, public, and good enough that a high school class can draw a legal congressional map in an afternoon. When citizens can submit their own maps and compare them to the official one, “trust us” stops being an argument.

Does any of this actually pass?

It does, and the margins are the hopeful part. In 2018, Michigan voters approved a citizens redistricting commission with about 61 percent of the vote. The campaign started with a single Facebook post from a woman in her twenties asking whether anyone wanted to do something about gerrymandering. The same year, Colorado’s reforms passed with more than 70 percent. These are not narrow partisan wins. They are what happens when a question gets put to voters directly rather than to the officeholders being asked to give something up.

What can one person actually do about it?

Find out how your state draws its maps, because most people have no idea. If it is a legislature, find out whether a commission bill or ballot initiative exists and who is carrying it. If it is a commission, find out whether it has real criteria and whether its meetings are public. Then go to one. Redistricting hearings are among the most consequential and least attended meetings in American government, which is exactly why showing up has outsized leverage.

This is the terrain my fiction lives on. In the Bull Moose series, the crises are the loud kind — a succession fight, a constitutional emergency, a republic improvising under pressure. But the machinery underneath is always the quiet kind: the rules nobody reads, written by people nobody watched, until the day they decide everything. Tree of Liberty is largely about what happens when a system’s defenders finally remember that the rules belong to them. If you want to start with something shorter, the prequel, The Senate Deception, is free.

Gerrymandering is a solvable problem. It is solvable because it is a rules problem, and rules are the one part of a democracy that citizens can change without anyone’s permission. That is not optimism. That is just an accurate reading of where the leverage is.

Frequently asked questions

Can gerrymandering be fixed without a constitutional amendment? Yes. Most successful anti-gerrymandering reforms have happened at the state level through ballot initiatives, state constitutional amendments, and state court rulings – not through federal action. After Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), state law is where the practical remedies live.

Do independent redistricting commissions really work? They are not perfect, but they consistently produce more competitive and more compact districts than legislature-drawn maps. The key is whether the commission is given binding criteria – compactness, respect for communities, and an explicit ban on drawing for partisan or incumbent advantage.

Is gerrymandering a problem caused by one political party? No. Both major parties have drawn self-serving maps wherever they have controlled the process, and the practice dates to 1812. That is precisely why structural reform works better than hoping the right people win: it changes the incentive rather than the occupant.

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About the author: Michael Fedor is the award-winning author of the Bull Moose political thriller series. Drawing on 20 years inside politics and campaigns, he writes pulse-pounding fiction about power, democracy, and the fragile machinery of the republic.