Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

How multimember districts could end partisan gerrymandering

The single transferable vote explained.

Eckam is a Texas software developer and graphic designer. Last year he self-published "Beyond Two Parties: Why America Needs a Multiparty System and How We Can Have It."


A year ago the Supreme Court declared partisan gerrymandering beyond the reach of its adjudication — while at the same time acknowledging the practice is "incompatible with democratic principles." So what can be done about it?

Many activists are pursuing independent redistricting commissions, which would certainly help. But something a little more radical would go further in safeguarding our democracy from partisan abuses of power.

Instead of electing each of the 435 members of the House to represent a district with a single member, we could create fewer congressional districts but then elect several members in each of them. For example: Texas, which because of population growth will probably be able to send 39 representatives to Congress for the next decade, could decide to have 13 districts with three members each.

These seats would be filled in a single election using a proportional, multi-winner voting method, such as the single transferable vote.

The number of representatives from a district is called its "district magnitude." Once the number reaches five or so, the electoral system becomes effectively immune to partisan gerrymandering, political scientist Douglas Amy of Mount Holyoke College has noted.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

To see why, remember that single-member elections are winner-take-all. The stakes are very high for the parties because losing, even by a hair, means getting nothing. There's no proportionality of representation; one can only hope that disproportionality in one district is balanced by an opposite disproportionality somewhere else. The low fidelity of representation leaves a huge opening for political operators to skew their party's seat share, relative to vote share.

It's easy to see how this works by looking at the first illustration below. The big rectangular "state" has 60 voters, 36 Republican red and 24 Democratic blue, and they get to fill six single-member House seats. This can be done in some very different ways. In Map A, red gets 100 percent of the seats even though it has just 60 percent of the voters. But in Map B,the reds get just one-third of the seats despite its three-fifths of the voters — thanks to the power of the complementary redistricting tactics known as "cracking" and "packing."

packing and cracking in redistricting

In this second set of schematics, below, the same jurisdiction elects three members each to represent just two districts.

Map C shows a simple division in which both districts have the same share of voters as the state, three-fifths red and two-fifths blue. But because of the multimember system the Democrats get to fill one of the three seats in each district, which isn't too far from their share of the vote.

Map D shows what might happen if the blue team drew the maps. By adjusting the lines so they have a slight majority in one district, while leaving enough of their allies in the other to maintain a single representative there, they manage to take half of the six seats.

That's still out of proportion to their share of the overall vote, but not too far out of line compared to what the blue team was able to achieve under the most aggressive single-member gerrymander scenario. What's more, there's no way to distort the balance any further than that. Blue cannot gain more representatives in one district without losing one in the other district.

Put another way, as district magnitude increases, the granularity of representation narrows further the scope for distortion. Greater representational accuracy renders attempts at gerrymandering unprofitable. It's ruled out structurally, rather than by a delicate balance of competing interests.

multimember districts

Multimember districts were used to draw the congressional maps of many states for much of American history. But it was usually for a wrong purpose — combined with non-proportional, "at large" election methods such as block voting in order to dilute the electoral strength of Black voters. In 1967, Congress prohibited multimember House seats, concluding that single-member districts were a good way to comply with the Supreme Court's landmark "one person, one vote" decision a few years before — and were an improvement over at-large elections.

That's no doubt true, but it's quite a low bar. Combining several-member seats with proportional representation is a far better way to ensure representation for minorities of all kinds — because it flows from the structure of the system. Under single-member districts, minority representation depends on groups being geographically concentrated, to some extent. Mapmakers can't draw a "majority-minority" district for a group that's perfectly integrated.

But why should integration and fair representation be in conflict with each other? With proportional multimember districts, they wouldn't be.

A bill stuck in Congress would require multimember districts in all states with more than one representative. Alternatively, Congress could simply repeal the 1967 law and let states decide. Local reform would also help, both to achieve better representation and to raise awareness.

Of course, it won't be easy to get legislators to act. It will require sustained effort, starting with a greater understanding of how the switch would mean fairer representation for all Americans. There's a lot of "bang for the buck" here — the costs may be somewhat higher than for independent commissions, but the benefits are also greater.

That gerrymandering is such a big issue in our democracy attests to deeper problems of representation. Only because of the partisan duopoly are the politicians (either Republicans or Democrats are always in control) able to abuse their power to suppress competition. Why not attack this problem at the root? Given time to become established, proportional multimember districts would loosen the grip of partisan interests over our democracy by depriving them of majority power.

James Madison wrote that since it's impossible to eliminate factions, we need to find ways to control their pernicious effects. His idea was that an extended republic would encompass a greater variety of interests, making it less likely that an oppressive majority could be established.

Gerrymandering is clearly one of many such pernicious effects of faction. Multimember districts would not only end the political profitability of such mapmaking but also begin to address the deeper issues of representation that now enable the practice.

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less