What on Earth is Going on With Mid-Decade Redistricting?

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) unveils his state’s new proposed congressional map in response to a similar mid-decade move by Texas Republicans.

In my recent hypothetical 2032 election prediction article, I briefly covered the topic of redistricting, a process where the congressional representation in the House of Representatives and electoral vote counts of states get either maintained or altered depending on changes in their populations. Also a key part of this process is states redrawing their congressional maps, balancing the population of each of their house districts across their respective boundaries. In my recent article, I referred to redistricting as a process that occurs “at the turn of every decade,” as has been the tradition throughout American history barring significant legal action.

However, recently, ahead of the 2026 House elections, a full-scale redistricting war has broken out between the Democrats and Republicans, starting with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott calling a special session of its state legislature upon the request of President Donald Trump to approve a new congressional map that will create five extra Republican districts in a blatant partisan gerrymander (the act of drawing unfair congressional maps to heavily favor a specific political party). Days later, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state would directly counter the move from Texas by redrawing its own congressional map in an equally partisan move to add five extra Democratic seats. Governors across the country in Democratic and Republican states alike, such as New York’s Kathy Hochul and Florida’s Ron DeSantis, have echoed this pro-gerrymandering sentiment in what looks set to become a nationwide competition to determine which individual state can gerrymander their congressional map the most (only partially satire, unfortunately).

I tend to avoid opinionated articles, but I fully believe this redistricting war to be a complete sham from both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and a fundamental betrayal of our constitutional principles. Donald Trump and the Republican Party obviously deserve much of the credit for starting this mess, but the Democrats are also fully to blame for perpetuating and exacerbating it. The recent concerted efforts of both parties have made partisan gerrymandering seem like the norm of American politics rather than the exception, which is simply unacceptable.

While partisan gerrymandering may not be explicitly illegal, I believe it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which states that one individual’s vote should be worth “as much as another’s” in a congressional election. By creating more seats for a specific party within their boundaries, each individual state that gerrymanders their districts is diluting the voting power of a significant portion of their population. With heavy scrutiny being placed by both Democrats and Republicans on the national balance of seats in the House ahead of the 2026 election cycle, there is a growing risk of a chain reaction of essential gerrymandering warfare where Democratic and Republican states counter each other’s efforts to gain a political advantage by rigging their congressional maps, leading only to a nationwide diluting of voting power likely to affect tens of millions of voters while the national balance of power remains essentially the same.

Of course, the actual results of this standoff (which currently only officially includes Texas and California for the time being) will likely not be so extreme. Many states have laws against mid-decade redistricting, and even in a highly partisan environment, only so many states are likely to get involved. But to both Democratic and Republican leaders, I ask this: is this all really worth it? The United States claims to be a country run by the power of the people, but this back-and-forth gerrymandering, which will at most slightly affect the results of a single midterm election cycle, seems to be entirely political, with “we the people” suffering the most from it. We can only hope that the true Americans remaining within our country’s government structure (if there even are any) work to put a stop to this madness, before the perils of democratic backsliding envelop us all.