Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
Dozens of Texas House Democrats have fled the state to block a redistricting plan. Texas Republicans unveiled a draft congressional map last week that would create more Republican-leaning seats in the U.S. House.
As the redistricting dispute continues, Civics 101 host Nick Capodice joins Julia to talk about gerrymandering, how politicians redraw a map to choose their voters and if it’s even legal.
Transcript
Before we get into what's going on in Texas, can you give us a quick explainer on what gerrymandering is?
Every ten years in the U.S., we do a census. After that census, we do what is called redistricting. This is where we adjust the maps defining our state's congressional districts. This is normal and good, and we have been doing it a long time. Now, gerrymandering is when those district lines are drawn for a political purpose. The districts are divided, so one party is assured to get more seats in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Okay, how is this done then? How can someone draw a map to benefit one party over the other?
Well, it'd be easy to do in New Hampshire, so I'll use it as an example. Listeners in New Hampshire know that we have two districts, though we had as many as four at one point. Both of our representatives in New Hampshire are in the Democratic Party, but let's say the Republican Party wanted to make it so one of those two seats in Congress went to a Republican. What they simply do is draw the district map so all the very blue cities and towns in New Hampshire are in one district, and then the other district would be majority Republican, sending a GOP to Washington.
One thing that's tricky though, is that under the Constitution, the number of people in each district has to be the same. So these maps get very creative. I encourage listeners out there to look up some of the more obvious ones. States with districts that are long straight lines or strange geometric shapes.
Is [gerrymandering] legal?
It depends on your state. Many states have declared political or racial gerrymandering unconstitutional. However, while the Supreme Court has so far ruled that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act, political gerrymandering was ruled in 2019 to not be under the purview of the Supreme Court.
All right, Nick, let's circle back to what's going on in Texas right now. Are Republicans indeed trying to create a gerrymander?
They are, Julia. And in this instance, there is no secret whatsoever that that's what they're trying to do. President Donald Trump has requested that Texas redraw its congressional maps before the midterm elections, with the explicit goal of sending five more Republicans to the House. These [current] maps were drawn a while ago after our 2020 census, but [Texas Gov. Greg Abbott] and the Republican-controlled legislature is trying to change them now, not after a census.
So to give you an example: Texas has 38 districts—that’s 38 representatives in federal government. If we use the 2024 election as sort of a loose measurement, 56% of Texans voted for Trump, 43% for Kamala Harris. If we had a system based on that—and we don't—Texas would have 21 Republicans and 16 Democrats in the U.S. House in Washington. Under these new maps, it could look like 30 Republicans and eight Democrats without anybody changing their vote whatsoever.
But ultimately, the decision on whether this can happen or not, lies with the courts, and current trends in the courts lead me to believe the GOP might get their way on this one. Whether or not the Democratic Party retaliates by doing the same thing in Democratic-controlled states is up in the air.
