"Why and Why Not" podcast host Brad Fallon welcomes guest Dr. Stephen Medvic, Author of Gerrymandering: The Politics of Redistricting in the United States, for an in-depth look at gerrymandering.
This funny-sounding word gets scorn from both major political parties, yet we have more gerrymandered maps than ever. So how'd we get here and what could we do about it?
Can America overcome minority rule? Examining the Electoral College, NPVIC, campaign finance, and democratic reform in the 21st century.
The challenge for continuing the American Experiment is recovering from the "Second Gilded Age" (1980s to the present). As of early 2026, the U.S. national debt is 122% to 125% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This situation has been exacerbated since 2000, when the U.S. national debt as a percentage of GDP was 33% to 35%. Americans can attribute this worsening situation to two non-popular vote presidents, Bush-43 and Trump-45. Directly, during their terms, and indirectly, with the aftermath of the 2008 Great recession and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1894, toward the end of the 19th century “Gilded Age," the U.S. national debt was approximately 7% of gross domestic product GDP.
Minority rule occurs when a numerical or ideological minority holds the power to consistently thwart the will of the majority or govern over them. It thrives through the coordinated reinforcement of specific electoral, institutional, and legal mechanisms.
The extension of the "second Gilded Age" was achieved through several interconnected mechanisms of minority rule, which shielded hyper-concentrated wealth and corporate power from democratic accountability, as follows:
Minoritarian rule of the winner-take-all (WTA) electoral college: Because 48 states allocate all electoral votes to the statewide winner, a candidate can secure the presidency while losing the popular vote. This enables the election of administrations that prioritize corporate deregulation and tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, even when the broader electorate demands reform.
Electoral manipulation: Once institutions are in place, the mechanisms of voting can be altered to ensure the ruling minority maintains an electoral advantage.
Partisan gerrymandering: Lawmakers manipulate district boundaries to pack opposition voters into a few districts or spread them out thinly, allowing the minority party to retain a governing majority of seats despite winning fewer total votes statewide.
Voter suppression: Stricter voting regulations—such as rigid voter ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and the reduction of early voting—disproportionately restrict access for minority communities and lower-income voters.
Institutional counter-majoritarianism: certain governing structures are explicitly designed to over-represent specific geographic or demographic groups at the expense of population equality.
Malapportionment of legislatures: In systems like the U.S. Senate, low-population rural states receive the same representation as highly populated urban centers. This allows a minority of the population to block national legislation.
Legislative obstruction: Minority groups utilize built-in procedural hurdles within deliberative bodies to stop majority action.
The Filibuster: In legislative chambers, this rule requires supermajorities (e.g., 60 out of 100 votes) to pass routine legislation or end debate. This allows a minority of legislators to veto the entire legislative agenda.
Judicial entrenchment: When the ruling minority controls the executive and legislative branches, they can appoint lifetime judges who share their ideological preferences.
Counter-Majoritarian Courts: Appointed judges can use the power of judicial review to overturn laws passed by the majority, strike down civil rights protections, and further enable restrictive voting and campaign finance laws.
Money in politics and concentrated wealth allows well-funded, organized interest groups to exert outsized influence over the political process compared to the general populace.
Dark Money: Unregulated or anonymous campaign contributions allow a wealthy few to fund sympathetic candidates, lobby for specific policies, and run mass media campaigns that shift the political agenda.
From a fiscal standpoint, America can ill afford another non-popular vote president. While the Constitution allows state legislatures to determine the method of elector selection, the Framers did not mandate the winner-take-all electoral college system currently used by 48 states. This system concentrates campaign attention on a few "swing states" while rendering millions of votes in "safe states" effectively irrelevant.
Few would deny that minority rule is the proverbial “can of worms” to remedy; however, the prevention of a future non-popular vote president will potentially reduce institutional counter-majoritarianism of the U.S. Senate and the counter-majoritarian courts.
Reducing the influence of money pouring into presidential politics since the 2010 Citizens United decision may actually be possible by addressing the WTA structure of the electoral college. By changing how electoral votes are allocated, the incentive to concentrate money in a few swing states could be reduced.
The winner-take-all feature of the electoral college narrows the focus of massive campaign expenditures in a “Funnel Effect” to a handful of closely divided battleground states. Because candidates have little to gain from spending in states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind, they concentrate all their financial resources on 15 or 16 states, or in some cycles, as few as seven key swing states. All this could change if the "battleground state" phenomenon were taken away from the wealthy, as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) would accomplish.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is a pragmatic, state-based initiative designed to ensure that the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes across fifty states and the District of Columbia wins the presidency. It aims to achieve this without requiring a constitutional amendment, operating instead within the existing electoral college framework by utilizing states' constitutional authority to appoint electors. If enough states join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) to reach 270 electoral votes, the United States will effectively shift from a WTA regime to a national popular vote system for electing the President.
As of early 2026, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been adopted by seventeen states and the District of Columbia, which collectively hold 209 electoral votes. The compact requires 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 total) to take effect. It currently needs sixty-one more electoral votes to become active.
Legislative elections will be held on November 3, 2026, for eighty-eight state legislative chambers in forty-six states. In 2026, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) will be a relevant issue in several state elections, particularly in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As the compact needs sixty-one more electoral votes to hit the 270-vote threshold, these purple or contested states are key battlegrounds where legislative control could determine whether they join the 18 jurisdictions already signed on.
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
An analysis of Project 2025, the Electoral College, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, examining democracy, representation, and presidential elections.
Project 2025 is a structural undoing of the "Spirit of 1776." It fundamentally undermines the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in the following areas: democratic representation, equality, liberty, and checks/balances. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) restores the founding ideals of civic equality.
Spirit of 1776 – Rejected by Project 2025, Embraced by NPVIC
Project 2025 is a manifesto that fundamentally rejects the "Spirit of 1776," it replaces the founding ideals of decentralized liberty, civic equality, and resistance to authoritarian rule with a blueprint for a highly centralized, imperial presidency. The 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” operates not as a preservation of 1776, but as its structural undoing.
The primary arguments positioning Project 2025 as a rejection of the original American revolutionary principles, follow:
Swapping Rebellion Against Monarchy for the "Imperial Presidency": The American Revolution was to overthrow the overreaching, centralized authority of a single ruler (King George III) and to establish a system of strict checks and balances. Project 2025 seeks to drastically expand executive power. It advocates for the Unitary Executive Theory, which places the entirety of the executive branch, including independent regulatory bodies—under direct presidential control.
Dismantling the Separation of Powers: The Framers deliberately fragmented government authority across three branches to prevent any single entity from usurping total control. The Project 2025 blueprint encourages the executive branch to bypass congressional intent. For example, it outlines strategies to unilaterally reallocate federal funds and deploy the military domestically via the Insurrection Act, effectively eroding legislative and judicial counterweights.
Replacing a Merit-Based Civil Service with a Loyalty-Based Bureaucracy: Early American governance sought to transition away from the European "spoils system," where governance depended on royal patronage and absolute fealty to the Crown. A central pillar of Project 2025 is the revival of "Schedule F," a classification mechanism allowing the president to strip civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees. Critics argue that converting apolitical experts into political appointees establishes a modern-day system of political patronage that demands absolute loyalty to the executive, running counter to Enlightenment-era principles of public accountability.
Narrowing the Scope of Liberty and Universal Rights: The Declaration of Independence asserted that all individuals possess unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Though flawed in execution, it established a trajectory toward expanding individual self-determination. Human rights advocacy groups emphasize that Project 2025 outlines a highly prescriptive, state-sanctioned vision for American society. By utilizing federal machinery to restrict reproductive freedoms, rollback LGBTQ+ protections, and legally enforce a specific traditionalist religious framework, critics argue the project replaces individual liberty with state-enforced moral conformity.
While proponents claim the Project 2025 as a necessary reclamation of national sovereignty, opponents see it as a structural counter-revolution that swaps the foundational principles of American democracy for centralized authoritarianism.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) and Project 2025 represent opposite approaches to American democracy, differing fundamentally in their views on voter enfranchisement, states' rights, and the balance of political power.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) aligns with the democratic ideals of the "spirit of 1776" by ensuring the president is chosen directly by all citizens. This restores foundational principles of the American Revolution—popular sovereignty and political equality—by guaranteeing every voter's ballot carries the exact same weight, regardless of where they live.
Reclaiming "Consent of the Governed" :The Declaration of Independence asserts that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". In modern presidential elections, the winner-take-all Electoral College system means millions of votes are effectively nullified if a candidate loses a specific state. By transitioning to a national popular vote, the NPVIC ensures every single citizen’s voice directly contributes to the national outcome, honoring the revolutionary promise that true authority comes from the people.
Ensuring "All Men Are Created Equal": The 1776 spirit is rooted in the ideal of fundamental equality. Currently, the Electoral College creates a system of unequal representation where a voter in a swing state holds disproportionate sway over the presidency, while voters in safe partisan states are ignored. The NPVIC restores this ideal by making one person's vote equal to any other person's vote nationwide.
Fulfilling the Promise of "No Taxation Without Representation": The core grievance of the Revolutionary era was being subjected to laws and taxes without having a voice in the legislature. Today, an American living in a deeply red or blue state is effectively disenfranchised when it comes to the nation's highest office. By pooling the voting power across states, the NPVIC ensures that every American participates in electing the commander-in-chief, eliminating modern-day electoral disenfranchisement.
The NPVIC: Leverages federalism to achieve a national goal. Using Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives state legislatures the authority to direct the appointment of their electors, states collaboratively enter into a binding compact to reflect the will of the entire American electorate.
NPVIC is an agreement among U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the overall popular vote in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. It is considered a pragmatic, voluntary state-based initiative because it aims to ensure the winner of the national popular vote wins the presidency without requiring a constitutional amendment, operating instead within the existing Electoral College framework by utilizing states' constitutional authority to appoint electors. If enough states join the NPVIC to reach 270 electoral votes, the United States will effectively shift from a winner-take-all (WTA) regime to a national popular vote system for electing the President.
With Virginia’s adoption, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been adopted by eighteen states and the District of Columbia, which collectively hold 222 electoral votes. The compact requires 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 total) to take effect. It currently needs forty-eight more electoral votes to become active.
In 2026, NPVIC will be a relevant issue in several state elections, particularly in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As the compact needs forty-eight more electoral votes to reach the 270-vote threshold, these purple or contested states are key battlegrounds where legislative control could determine whether they join the nineteen jurisdictions already signed on.”
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
California voters increasingly distrust both major parties. Here's why the state's Top Two primary gives independent voters more power to shape elections.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - California voters have already received ballots for the June 2 primary, and the message they have going into these elections may not be what the political class wants to hear: They are not thrilled with either major party.
A recent analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that majorities of likely voters have unfavorable views of both parties—61% unfavorable toward the Democratic Party and 70% unfavorable toward the Republican Party.
There were only a quarter of respondents who said the two major parties do an adequate job representing the American people, while roughly 3-in-4 said the parties do such a poor job that a third major party is needed.
Notably, this doesn’t just mean any third party.
Third party registration in California only reaches about 5% of the electorate. This is counting the American Independent Party, which has many voters registered who did not mean to declare a party preference.
What voters want is representation that is beholden to them, not party leadership. They want candidates who prioritize the needs of the electorate, not the clamoring of shrinking party bases and monied interests aligned with the parties.
That should matter in any election. In California’s June 2 primary, it matters even more.
Unlike traditional party primaries, California’s nonpartisan primary system does not belong to the Democratic or Republican Party. For statewide offices, legislative races, and congressional contests, all candidates appear on the same ballot, and all voters can choose any candidate, regardless of party. The two candidates who receive the most votes move on to November.
In other words, California voters who are frustrated with both parties are not locked out of the process. They own the process.
This is especially true of independent voters (many of whom are registered No Party Preference in California). The campaigns like to treat them like spectators, and while there is a noticeable turnout gap, if they participated, they would become the most powerful voting bloc.
The problem is whether enough voters know that.
The word “primary” carries baggage. In many states, it means party members choosing party nominees. In California, it's not about picking party nominees but picking the top candidates, regardless of party.
The difference is party control versus voter control. And it is why California's nonpartisan primary is called a voter-nominated system.
California adopted the Top Two primary under Proposition 14 in 2010. Supporters argued that all voters should be able to choose any candidate, regardless of party, and that independent voters should have a meaningful say in the process.
At the time, 54% of voters approved the reform, which went into effect for the 2012 election cycle. More than a decade later, the system is once again at the center of political debate.
Early polling in the 2026 governor’s race raised the possibility of two Republicans advancing in California because of a crowded Democratic field. As noted on IVN, this was when a quarter of the electorate was still undecided.
Party insiders have since used anxieties around this to push for Top Two repeal.
They don’t want to upgrade the system, as the More Choice Coalition has offered to advance more candidates to November and use ranked choice ballots. They want to return to a system of party control and independent voter suppression.
As we near primary election day, polls show the odds of a two-Republican general election have all but evaporated (as we said it would).
California’s nonpartisan primary can produce outcomes party leaders don’t like. It can advance candidates who do not have the blessing of party leadership. It can also advance two candidates of the same party in a state that already leans heavily Democrat.
The question the parties don’t want voters to ask is: What is the worst that happens if two Democrats advance to November?
Democratic registration is at 45% of the electorate and PPIC has found that 40% of independents lean Democrat.
So again, what happens if two Democrats advance to the general election in the governor’s race?
The distinctions between the candidates suddenly matter more and they need to compete for broader support. Especially since the voters who choose the winner will be outside the party.
What happens if a Democrat goes up against a MAGA-aligned Republican? The Democrat wins in a landslide.
The original sponsors of California’s nonpartisan primary system assert that the point of Top Two was never that any party was entitled to a spot in November. The point was that they have to earn that spot by getting voter support.
Further, party candidates have to earn a win.
That is what it means to have a voter-nominated system. This is not a flaw to voters who are tired of partisan gatekeeping. That is the feature. And if voters look at the data, Californians have been mostly satisfied with the results.
According to PPIC:
“After the 2012 election cycle, 59% of likely voters said that Proposition 14 turned out to be ‘mostly a good thing’ for California, with similar responses in 2017 (60%), 2022 (62%), and 2024 (68%). In our most recent polling, majorities across political groups and along the political spectrum agreed.”
Party leaders really want these numbers to change.
Voting is already underway in California. Vote centers opened in Voter’s Choice Act counties on May 23, and in-person early voting locations throughout California will be open by May 30. June 2 is the final day to vote in person.
Millions of independent voters stayed home in the last gubernatorial primary. They are told they have no power and their only role is to spectate until November. However, they do not have to wait for the parties to give them permission to matter.
They already have a ballot. They already have choices. They already have the ability to shape the November election before most of the political world starts paying attention.
And in a state where voters are increasingly unhappy with both major parties, the June 2 primary may be the clearest reminder that California’s election system is not a private contest between party organizations.
It belongs to voters.
California Voters Don’t Like Either Party. Good Thing the Primary Doesn’t Belong to The Parties. was originally published by Independent Voter News and is republished with permission.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Mitchell Jr., Patricia Roberts Harris, and other guests at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.
In 2002, U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, a Republican, nearly lost his South Texas seat to Democrat Henry Cuellar. So when the GOP used its newfound majority in the state Legislature to redraw the voting maps the next year, they sawed through Cuellar’s hometown of Laredo and scattered Latino voters, who tended to vote Democratic, into other districts.
Latino advocacy groups sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the cornerstone provision of the law that prevents government bodies from diluting the voting power of specific groups. The Supreme Court found Texas lawmakers had taken away Latino voting power “because they were about to exercise it.”
“Latino voters were poised to elect their candidate of choice,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The State not only made fruitless the Latinos’ mobilization efforts but also acted against those Latinos who were becoming most politically active.”
Bonilla’s 23rd Congressional District was redrawn, and he lost to a Democrat. Just five years later, Latino voters flipped it back to Republican control; the seat was held most recently by GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who resigned last month.
Nina Perales, who argued that case at the Supreme Court, sees that district as an enduring testament to the power of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“A lot of the districts that we see in the map today were created to make sure that minority communities were not accidentally chopped up, and that minority communities could have a voice in some parts of the state,” Perales said. “In CD-23, when a majority of Latino voters support Gonzales, they get to elect Gonzales, and it’s irrelevant what Gonzales’ political party is.”
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2, raising the bar for voter dilution claims so high as to make the statute a “dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. Partisan gerrymandering, like the type used to try to keep Bonilla in power, is a defense against allegations of vote dilution, the conservative majority ruled. Under the new standard, plaintiffs will have to prove mapmakers intentionally set out to discriminate against voters on the basis of their race.
Even as it diminishes in power, the legacy of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is deeply woven into Texas’ political maps, reflected in districts carefully drawn to ensure voters of color could have a say. The landmark 1965 law also gave rise to a new generation of leaders, elected from Black, Hispanic and Asian communities. From that point on, both parties would have to look out for voters of color when drawing their maps — and if they didn’t, voters would have legal recourse.
Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said his career has been “defined” by the Voting Rights Act. As a young Black state representative, he was elected in 2012 to a congressional district drawn to right what a court found to be a legislative wrong: Texas had divided communities of color in North Texas across multiple majority-white seats designed to elect Republicans. Fourteen years later, Veasey is now departing Congress after GOP lawmakers redrew the district out from under him last summer.
With Section 2 of the VRA now significantly weakened, it will be harder to make the legal case that this redraw had an improper racial, rather than partisan, intent.
The recent hollowing out of the Voting Rights Act created a disconcerting full circle moment for Veasey, who recalled that his district was originally drawn for Willow Park GOP Rep. Roger Williams. Under the new lines, Veasey noted, Williams “will end up representing my neighborhood after all.”
In 1965, when Texas’ favorite son, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Voting Rights Act into law, he said the vote “is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.”
The law included two pillars with significant implications for Texas — Section 2, which prohibits voter discrimination based on race, and Section 5, which requires jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination to get preapproval from the Department of Justice for any voting changes, including new electoral maps.
Before the law went into effect, Texas had just two people of color in its congressional delegation — Reps. Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio and Kika De La Garza from the Rio Grande Valley, both of whom were Mexican-American. They each voted for the Voting Rights Act that would enable the ranks of Hispanic lawmakers to swell significantly.
In the 1970s, Barbara Jordan became the first Black member of Congress from Texas. As a state senator, Jordan helped draw the district she would soon be elected to, a seat that provides Black Houstonians the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice to this day. Three new representatives of color joined Texas’ congressional delegation in the 1980s. By the 1990s, there were 13 members of color who served at any point during the decade. With two more election cycles to go, the 2020s have already reached a peak of 22 members of color, some of whom have represented white-majority districts.
During her sophomore term, in 1975, Jordan got Texas added to the list of states that needed preclearance for its maps. In 1982, Congress reinforced the law with an amendment that said maps ran afoul of the law if they had the effect of diluting racial or ethnic groups’ vote, even if that wasn’t the intent. These new provisions, the second of which overruled a Supreme Court decision to the contrary, opened the floodgates to litigation against Texas’ maps, at every level of government.
In each decade since the law’s passage, at least one of Texas’ maps has been found to have violated the law, and courts have ordered at least one new district to be drawn. The maps drawn in 2021 and 2025 are still under active litigation.
In the 1980s, plaintiffs successfully sued over the congressional, state Senate and state House maps under the Voting Rights Act, compelling redraws of legislative seats that were found to have diluted Black and Hispanic voting strength through packing them into just a few districts in the state’s urban counties — and into a single district in South Texas. Through preclearance, the Department of Justice also ordered Texas to redraw districts that diluted Black and Hispanic voters’ strength. The effects of those redraws can still be seen in today’s maps.
“You had charges and claims against the South Texas district, because they were packed down against the border,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist and founder of the Lone Star Project who has been involved in Texas redistricting cases for decades. “That’s why now, you see South Texas districts running north and south instead of along the bottom. It’s because [of] the court rulings under the Voting Rights Act, that you couldn’t pack those districts down against the border.”
More subtle, but just as important, was the way the Voting Rights Act pushed Texas lawmakers to proactively consider voters of color when drawing their electoral maps, Perales said. In the 1990s, for example, the majority-Hispanic 28th and 29th Congressional Districts “were born out of an understanding that the state needed to comply with Section 2,” she said.
Having grasped that it would be better to comply on the front end than be hauled into court later, the Legislature used to bring MALDEF and other groups in around the decennial census to train legislators on how to draw maps that met the law’s requirements.
“Part of that legal training was always on the obligation to avoid discriminating against minority voters under Section 2 the Voting Rights Act,” she said. “The guidance was, don’t inadvertently chop up minority communities when you’re drawing lines, because even if it’s inadvertent, it could be a legal problem.”
In 2013, the Supreme Court eliminated preclearance for most jurisdictions, including Texas. The state immediately reinstated a voter ID law that had been caught up under Section 5. The decision also freed Texas’ 2011 electoral maps from preclearance, though some parts of the map were later redrawn over Section 2 violations.
The centerpiece of the court’s redrawn map was the new 33rd Congressional District, crafted to allow voters of color to elect their preferred candidate in fast-growing Dallas and Tarrant county. The new lines were later upheld after a trial, in which the court concluded that lawmakers had “acted at least in part with a racially discriminatory motive … with regard to the districts in DFW in particular.”
Veasey was a state representative planning to run for reelection — and on his way to see a pre-Thanksgiving movie with his family — when he got a call that changed his career.
“I heard, hey, they’re gonna draw a new map, and there’s probably going to be an opportunity for you to run,” Veasey said. “You’ve got to make up your mind quick over whether you’re going to do it.”
He ran, and won, giving him a chance to represent a district that was as diverse as the state of Texas — one that would last about a decade and a half before falling victim to the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting.
Several other congressional districts that were shaped by the Voting Rights Act were subsequently dismantled by Republicans last summer. Among them are Hispanic-opportunity districts in South Texas, such as the 28th District represented by Cuellar, who rebounded from his loss to Bonilla to become one of Texas’ longest-tenured members of Congress.
The VRA also helped create Houston’s 9th Congressional District, where more than four in five residents are Black or Hispanic.
Last summer, lawmakers redrew it to a “bare majority” — 50.3% Hispanic — as they did several other districts.
Early last week, the Supreme Court allowed that map to go into effect while a trial proceeds. Just two days later, the court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that the results-based test that had been used for decades should be replaced with a new, higher bar that allows for an easier partisan defense.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said lower courts had applied Section 2 “in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.” Under the new framework Alito laid out in the decision, a Section 2 claim must prove that the state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
Angle said Texas’ most recent rounds of redistricting demonstrate what a post-Section 2 future may look like.
“You’ve got a situation in which a state that’s over 60% people of color is only going to have somewhere between 20% and 30% of the districts where voters of color’s vote matters at all,” Angle said.
State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Republican from Plano, said the U.S. had a long history of vote suppression that made the Voting Rights Act necessary.
“But we’ve moved on from that, clearly, and I think people recognize minority voters are entitled to equal representation but not certain election outcomes,” Shaheen said. “It really is more of a colorblind society, and elections are very much driven now by principles and policies, and not so much on skin color.”
Shaheen is among several GOP lawmakers who say they hope Texas takes up redistricting anew during the 2027 legislative session, this time with a focus on the state House and Senate lines.
Perales agrees that the Voting Rights Act is not about specific electoral outcomes. But she disagrees that the country is ready to move on from ensuring racial and ethnic voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice, regardless of political party or the ethnicity of the candidate.
“As much as Justice Alito wanted to make it seem like a case about partisanship, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s about dismantling something much more historic and much more deeply needed in our country, which is equal opportunity for everybody.”
For Veasey, the ruling was not a surprise. But now that his district has been chopped up and the VRA’s core provision has been kneecapped, the retiring congressman sees a bleak future for the representation of Black and brown voters.
“It’s going to go back to a pre-1965 posture,” he said. “We just won’t have nearly as many voices pushing. It’s just be [like] when we had one or two voices that were pushing back before the VRA was passed — that’s what it’s going to be like now.
How the Voting Rights Act Reshaped Texas’ Electoral Maps was originally published by The Texas Tribune, shared by VoteBeat Texas, and is republished with permission.
Gerrymandering (Not as fun as it is to say) - Why and Why Not
