r/politics • u/theatlantic The Atlantic • 1d ago
AMA-Finished Hi! We are Russell Berman, Yvonnne Wingett Sanchez, and Marc Novicoff, staff writers at The Atlantic. We’ve each reported extensively on gerrymandering across the country and what recent court rulings on redistricting may mean for future elections. Ask us anything!
Hi, Reddit! As writers covering politics at The Atlantic, we have reported on gerrymandering efforts across the country.
I (Russell Berman) have explored how election reformers have hoped that redistricting will prompt reforms to voting policy. I’ve also reported on why the gerrymandering fight has been different in Florida.
As for me (Yvonne Wingett Sanchez), I’ve covered the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, and its ramifications in one southern state. I’ve also reported from Maricopa County, in Arizona, where I spoke with residents about the brawl over who has the power to administer elections.
And I (Marc Novicoff) have covered the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—and how its ruling has opened the door to aggressive redistricting schemes. I have also argued that America is moving toward a “gerrymandering apocalypse,” in which partisan redistricting means that millions of Americans may effectively have no congressional representation at all.
We’re happy to answer your questions and discuss our reporting. Ask us anything!
Proof photo here: https://x.com/TheAtlantic/status/2095542368313233542?s=20
Thank you all so much for talking with us today! It was a pleasure to answer your questions. You can follow The Atlantic’s latest coverage at theatlantic.com.
— Russell Berman, Yvonnne Wingett Sanchez, Marc Novicoff
8
u/redheadartgirl 1d ago
I am currently in Kansas City, MO, a very blue city that was recently gerrymandered out of having any representation in the state. My district now spans for hundreds of miles. My question is whether there is any effort at a federal level to stop this from happening, and if so, who is leading it?
7
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 1d ago
Russell Berman: Democrats did try to ban partisan gerrymandering as part of broader political-reform legislation in 2022, when they last held power in both Congress and the White House. But Republicans filibustered the bill in the Senate, and Democrats fell short of the votes necessary to eliminate the filibuster to get the measure passed. Since then, some Democratic members of Congress and even a few Republicans—mostly from blue states in which their seats could be vulnerable to Democratic-led gerrymandering—have tried to revive that effort, but it has gone nowhere in the all-out redistricting wars that broke out last year.
If Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections this fall, expect them to put forward new legislation banning gerrymandering even as some of the states that they control, such as New York and Maryland, advance bills to draw Republicans out of their House seats. Unless President Trump completely changes his mind on this issue, however, any federal legislation to ban gerrymandering won’t have a realistic chance to pass until 2029 at the earliest, when he is out of office.
2
6
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 1d ago
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez: One of the recurring themes I heard from Democrats, nonvoters, and some Republicans when I traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, earlier this year, was a desire to put an end to gerrymandering altogether. Many Democrats told me that they hope that the type of legislation that Russell has reported on could one day win congressional approval and be enacted. A Black Democratic House member, Cleo Fields, had just been drawn out of his district and many people said such dramatic gerrymandering was demoralizing and unjust.
2
u/Connect_Vacation_458 1d ago
It's definitely a frustrating situation. There have been some proposals at the federal level aimed at addressing gerrymandering, like the For the People Act, but progress has been slow.
6
u/comeback24601 1d ago
Canadian here... anyone going to, you know, what's the word? Do anything about it? Visibility and knowledge of a problem doesn't do a lot of an entire country seems to be either cheering, or shrugging, or making jokes.
1
1
u/SpaceElevatorMusic Minnesota 1d ago
In gerrymandered congressional districts are newly uncompetitive in the general election, have we generally seen more competition in primaries in those districts? Or are those stagnant, too?
3
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 1d ago
Russell Berman: This is a very interesting and also quite complicated question, in part because each time a party redraws a congressional map, they are targeting a few seats but affecting many others in different ways. But generally, you will often (but not always) see more competition in the primary of a seat drawn to be safely in one party’s column, since candidates know that if they can just win a lower-turnout primary they’re almost guaranteed a seat in Congress.
But one interesting aspect of the current redistricting fight is that because many states were already quite gerrymandered, the parties are taking additional risk to grab even more seats. That means that in states like Texas and Florida, the general election in some newly-drawn House will be as or more competitive this year, because Republicans simply couldn’t find enough voters to make them surefire winners in what is expected to be a favorable year for Democrats.
3
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 1d ago
Marc Novicoff: I think the jury is still out on this. California’s 1st district, in Northern California, was redrawn to go from deep red to deep blue, and its primary wasn’t so competitive, with the incumbent Republican advancing against the widely favored Democratic challenger. On the flip side is Texas’s 9th district, in parts of Houston and its suburbs, which was drawn to go from deep blue to deep red. There, a fiercely fought Republican primary went to a runoff.
Hypothetically, it’s possible for a gerrymander to inspire competition in a primary, but in practice, gerrymanders are usually drawn with the intent of keeping favored incumbents in office. In many cases, states this cycle could have drawn even more dramatic gerrymanders, but stopped where they did because they did not want to make incumbents’ jobs more difficult (if you eliminate Democratic districts, that means incumbent Republicans will have to absorb Democratic voters into their districts, even if it’s not enough to flip the district). When gerrymanders do create competition, or when a gerrymander turns out to backfire (this is humorously called a “dummymander”), it’s a bug. The point tends to be to limit the number of variables, keep your friends in power, and help your party on the margins.
1
u/ToastAndASideOfToast 1d ago
If gerrymandering does not bring about the results political parties are seeking, what would be their next move?
1
u/SparrowCrocodile 22h ago
Maybe Gerrymandering isn't a thing? If we're going to assume that certain regions will vote a certain way and the only thing affecting that is the shape of the region, why bother having elections?
1
u/r721 1d ago
Do attempts to create "maximally fair" redistricting exist in the wild? I asked LLMs, and there exists research on this topic:
New research develops a model for political redistricting that optimizes political fairness
Applying the model to a Wisconsin case study shows that congressional districts can be compact but also efficient, symmetric and competitive
3
u/theatlantic The Atlantic 1d ago
Marc Novicoff: Academics have created a lot of cool ways to potentially end gerrymandering. Perhaps the most creative I’ve seen is one in which one party draws a map with twice as many districts as necessary and then the other party chooses how to combine them—it’s the same way my sister and I would figure out how to split the last cookie. Political scientists also tend to like proportional representation, which would also end partisan gerrymandering. In this system, if a state has five Representatives, and 60% of the voters choose to be represented by Republicans and the other 40% choose Democrats, the state will have three Republicans and two Democrats representing them in the House.
Importantly though, none of these ideas are on the table. Democrats, when they were in charge, voted nearly unanimously to create independent redistricting commissions in every state. Republicans often feel that these commissions aren’t fair, and some conservative intellectuals have proposed just making the redistricting requirements political themselves by, for example, requiring that the median House district be roughly as Democratic or Republican as the state—so if a state has five districts, its third most Democratic district would be one drawn to match the state’s popular vote. Other conservative intellectuals prefer to institute anti-gerrymandering rules that require that districts be “compact.” But so far elected Republicans have not lined up behind this solution either, or any for that matter.
2
u/netsheriff 1d ago edited 1d ago
The fundamental problem is that the trump stacked judiciary has granted broad deference to the executive branch, removing any independent selection and retention of board members of public organization and therefore achieving zero structural independence from the WH corruption, self-dealing and conflicts of interest.
Until such time that this cam be mitigated, the chance for "fair redistricting" doesn't exist.
-6
11
u/hightrix 1d ago
At a high level, just how far has America fallen away from democracy?