Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Congressional gerrymandering has been a boon for GOP, report finds

Kevin McCarthy

Over the last decade, Republicans have gained 27 seats in the House due to gerrymandering.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Partisan gerrymandering has given Republicans an edge in congressional elections over the last two decades, resulting in outsized GOP representation in the House, a recent study found.

Since 2000, nearly 40 House seats have shifted to favor Republicans as a result of gerrymandering, researchers at the University of Maryland concluded in their paper published last month. Democrats, on the other hand, have not seen any significant seat gains in the last five decades of redistricting.


The study analyzed how congressional districts have been redrawn over the past half-century. While neither party's redistricting strategies had significant impacts on House seats before the new millennium, Republican gerrymanders increased GOP representation by 9 percentage points in the last two decades. Mostly recently, Republicans gained 27 seats in the House due to gerrymandering in 2011.

Democratic gerrymanders, however, had little sway over House election outcomes, except in more populous states. In blue states with more than five congressional seats, gerrymandering decreased GOP representation by 9 percentage points. This impact goes up another 4 percentage points in states with more than 10 House members.

"It may not be surprising that parties manipulate vote aggregation to benefit themselves," the researchers conclude — although they noted that such power does not always lead to such actions.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Partisans may refrain from this manipulative behavior due to a moral sense of fairness in political competition, the researchers wrote. Those in non-competitive districts may not feel the need to gerrymander. Parties may also be concerned about future retribution or court involvement.

Following completion of the 2020 census, states will begin the redistricting process next year. Fourteen will use independent redistricting commissions to determine legislative districts, and eight will do the same for congressional maps. While a majority of state maps will be determined by politicians or in the courts, momentum has been in favor of states giving mapmaking authority over to nonpartisan commissions. Future studies will determine how effective these commissions have been.

This fall, Virginians will decide whether to adopt a redistricting commission, while Missourians will vote on whether to undo a redistricting reform initiative they approved two years ago. Anti-gerrymandering campaigns are ongoing in Oregon, Nevada and Arkansas, but the coronavirus pandemic has made such efforts more difficult to execute.

Read More

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less
Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

Someone filling out a ballot.

Getty Images / Hill Street Studios

Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

In the 2024 U.S. election, several states did not pass ballot initiatives to implement Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) despite strong majority support from voters under 65. Still, RCV was defended in Alaska, passed by a landslide in Washington, D.C., and has earned majority support in 31 straight pro-RCV city ballot measures. Still, some critics of RCV argue that it does not enhance and promote democratic principles as much as forms of proportional representation (PR), as commonly used throughout Europe and Latin America.

However, in the U.S. many people have not heard of PR. The question under consideration is whether implementing RCV serves as a stepping stone to PR by building public understanding and support for reforms that move away from winner-take-all systems. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of respondents (N=1000) on the 2022 Cooperative Election Survey (CES), results show that individuals who favor RCV often also know about and back PR. When comparing other types of electoral reforms, RCV uniquely transfers into support for PR, in ways that support for nonpartisan redistricting and the national popular vote do not. These findings can inspire efforts that demonstrate how RCV may facilitate the adoption of PR in the U.S.

Keep ReadingShow less