Houston, We Have a Problem

By Luke Pickrell

In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special legislative session. One item — improving emergency preparedness after the deadly Hill Country floods — was uncontroversial. Another — regulating hemp-derived THC products — was relatively minor. A third — redrawing Texas’s U.S. House map five years early — has exploded.

The state’s current House map is already under federal court review, with plaintiffs arguing it dilutes Black and Latino voting power in violation of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. That same Act was crippled by the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted Section 5. Now, Section 2 may be next on the chopping block. Backed by public encouragement from Trump, the Republicans are obviously trying to gerrymander their way to victory in the 2026 midterms.

In response, Texas Democrats have traveled to California and Illinois to talk with millionaire governors Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker, who are threatening retaliation with some gerrymandering of their own. Democrats need to “fight fire with fire,” said Newsom. During a press conference, Secretary-Treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO Leonard Aguilar said that “cheating” is the only way Republicans can stay in power.

First, it’s typical of the Democratic Party to fight gerrymandering with more gerrymandering — or “fight fire with fire” if you wear aviator sunglasses and keep your shirt unbuttoned like cool hand Newsom. And this from the party that’s supposed to be protecting our “democracy.”

Second, folks are understandably angry that Republicans care more about redistricting than they do about flood relief. But the GOP’s tactics make sense within the logic of our constitutional structure, where power doesn’t come from winning votes within a system of universal and equal suffrage, but by mastering a system designed to empower geographic minorities. It’s the same logic that drove Mitch McConnell to focus on replacing Ginsburg with a Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice instead of passing bills to deal with COVID, or that drives every presidential candidate to tailor their campaign to a measly 400,000 voters in a handful of swing states.

Third, the outrage over “cheating” is understandable but misdirected. Yes, the GOP is always looking to disenfranchise its way to victory. Within eight years of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, twenty-six states — the vast majority controlled by Republicans — passed restrictive voting laws, many of which disproportionately affected nonwhite voters. Observing the butchery, Levitsky and Ziblatt concluded that the decision “makes plain a simple fact: many of America’s venerated political institutions are not very democratic; indeed, they were not made for democracy.”

But gerrymandering is legal under federal law thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause — it’s “not the Court’s place to second-guess” state decisions on political advantage through redistricting, wrote Chief Justice Roberts — and the Senate’s filibuster.

Then there’s the Senate and the constitutional allocation of two seats per state regardless of population, along with Article Five’s provision that state representation can’t be changed unless all states agree. In 2016, a fifty-two-seat Republican majority represented states that were home to just 45 percent of the US population; in 2018, the party’s fifty-three-seat majority represented only 48 percent. Even when the Senate split 50–50 in 2020, Democratic senators represented 55 percent of the country, over 41 million more people than their Republican counterparts. Today’s Republican majority of fifty-three senators represents about 24 million fewer people than the Democratic minority of forty-five. Do Republicans control the Senate because they cheat? No — it’s all constitutional.

Was it cheating when Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidency in 2016, when he nominated three conservatives to the Court in his first term, or when his Justices were confirmed by a Senate majority representing less than half the population? No — again, it was all constitutional. The problem isn’t that Republicans are breaking the rules. The problem is the rules themselves.

Fifth, proportional representation (PR) can solve the problem of gerrymandering, which depends on drawing single-member, winner-takes-all districts in strategic ways. PR replaces that system with multi-member districts and allocates seats based on vote share. If Democrats win 60% of the vote in a five-member district, they get three seats; if Republicans win 40%, they get two.

PR also helps third, fourth, and even fifth parties get a foothold. “Whenever we look at maps of the political landscape in the United States, they are always depicted in red and blue, symbolizing the two-headed Cartel Party system that controls the US,” notes Jesse Kumin. “Two-color maps are made possible by Single Member Districts. I'm dreaming of a Proportional Map made up of lots of colors, more like a William T. Wiley painting, made possible by Multi-Member Districts.”

Could PR be implemented nationwide without breaking the Constitution? Technically, yes. The Uniform Congressional District Act of 1967 requires states to elect their representatives to the U.S. House using single-member districts. But that law could be repealed. However, repealing it would require passing a bill through a federal system designed to resist this kind of change. So while PR doesn’t conflict with the Constitution’s text, the Constitution — through its various minoritarian checks — stands in the way.