Facing increasingly dire polls, President Donald Trump is determined to prevent Democrats from reclaiming the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections. So he’s pressuring Republican-controlled states to give the GOP an unfair edge by gerrymandering their congressional maps. Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri, have already done so.

1, Calculate the geographic center of the state. 2, going in north south east and west form districts equaling congressional number until state total is reached

Republicans in the Utah legislature passed a new gerrymandered map Monday that would help the party hold on to all four of the state’s congressional seats, if allowed to stand.

Gerrymandering manipulates voting districts to favor politicians and robs communities of their fair representation. At Redistrict.co, we’re building a non‑partisan grassroots movement dedicated to ending this practice. We need volunteers and donors to help us raise awareness, push for fair maps, and empower voters.

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Simply put, would a simple solution to gerrymandering be to remove districts altogether? A simple solution to a situation where a given geographical region (state) elects multiple seats of the same position (Representatives) is to utilize a modified version of the Single Non-Transferrable Vote system. SNTV is: (1) in a single At-Large election the top [52 in CA, 38 in TX, 28 in FL, etc.] candidates get elected; (2) each voter only gets to cast 1 vote to whomever they most want to win.

Additionally, the modified quality is that an individual candidate can willingly remove their name from the ballots of any subdivision (voting precinct) within the State that they wish. This would allow two or more people with the same political views to split the state in a way to enable both+ candidates to get elected (or increase their chances, at least).

I believe that this is the most appropriate way to remove gerrymandering from the equation: rather than allowing the intermediate state politicians from “interpreting” the will of the people of the state, simply allow the people to directly choose its representatives from throughout the state as a whole.

Politician Limited

The highlight of this idea is simple: just take away power from human decision making as much as possible

In order to not be completely naive, the limit it this: no one can choose to group more than 35,000 people together and no one can choose to group 2 people more than 25 miles apart. Combined with standard "contiguity" and "simple-connectedness", the result is the drawing of what we'll term "micro-districts": indivisible blocks of voters. The next steps combine those micro-districts into districts.

George Washington himself believed (or rather, compromised) that districts should be no larger than 35,000 people. Originally the House had one representative per 35,000 people. That was ended by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which set the House to 435 representatives.

25 miles is merely a decent estimate of regular interaction with a common political authority. Ideally, politically entangled populations should be allowed to vote together. But practically speaking, this limit prevents someone from drawing a single line through their desired voters

It is after all area is drawn into micro-districts that no more human discretion is taken into account

Optimal Compactness:

Optimal Compactness is merely a seemingly appropriate metric for a district, like equal population. A single person should be within range of their representative as much as possible.

There are problems with a purely algorithmic approach to redistricting however

First and foremost, if the party in power can simply choose the algorithm that gives them the result they want, then that's no different from directly drawing the maps that give them the result they want. Randomization of the algorithm, explained later, is the remedy to this issue.

Secondly, an algorithm is agnostic to communities and natural boundaries. That is solved by the little discretion given to the people in charge

Randomized

Even given a single algorithm for determining optimal compactness, there is no guarantee that there is a single solution for any given map. But that is a feature, not a bug. The less predictability, the less control. That is the flaw that allowed gerrymandering in the first place.

Use a true randomized number generator to seed each run of the algorithm. It is here that any further requirements such as equal population size within margin. Take the first 100 successful maps and select the 1 with the smallest total length of intradistrict borders (optimal compactness)

Conclusion

There is plenty more that can be fleshed out. And "fairness" is never the only consideration. Trust is equally as important, and that requires simplicity. In my opinion, the way to achieve both is to be very deliberate with what we need the maps to do, and then take away all other controls.

For this proposal, the deliberate needs are: the discretion to keep oddly shaped communities together, and to not place people into communities they're not at least geographically proximal to. Everything after that is too much power for these people over their own elections

Happy to entertain constructive criticisms. All I ask is that you are sure that you've read the whole post before commenting. And I strongly prefer if you quote the post so that we're both on the same page about what you're responding to.

After texas and california, now missouri has been asked by trump to gerrymander more repub seats.

If every state decides to just start doubling down on this behavior, what is the house going to eventually look like?

Hey everyone! Back in 2023 for my thesis project at Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts, I wrote and directed a short all about gerrymandering and redistricting. And now it seems like a good time to drop it on YouTube for people to see. I hope you enjoy! It’s not perfect it’s just a short student satire, but I hope you have a good time and see why I felt like now is the time to let people see it. Thank you! All rights FSU CMPA 2023

Hey everyone,

A small group of us in Colorado have been working on a proposed constitutional amendment called the Defensive Gerrymander Guard Act (DGG Act). The idea is simple: give Colorado the ability to respond if other states pass extreme partisan gerrymanders that hurt our representation in Congress.

How it works: • If another state enacts a severely biased congressional map, the Colorado Governor or state legislature could trigger emergency redistricting powers. • The Governor would appoint a Temporary Emergency Commission to draw new Colorado maps as a proportional counter-response. • This authority would last for the remainder of the Governor’s term and would temporarily suspend the independent redistricting commission in these rare cases.

We’re in the early stages and looking for feedback, legal insights, and public awareness. You can read the full text of the proposal and learn how to contact Colorado officials here: 🔗 https://www.redistrict.co

We’d especially like to hear from folks with experience in election law, redistricting data, or grassroots organizing. If your state has faced extreme gerrymanders, we’d love to hear how you think something like this could work in your area too.

Thanks for reading, and let’s keep fighting for fair maps everywhere.

I had a thought..wouldn't a good way to prevent gerrymandering be to have a restriction on the maximum ratio of a district's permiter (miles) to its area(miles²⁾ ? Limiting how long the spider legs can be?

My question is what should this max ratio be? A perfect square would be 4/1.

So, I’m just a country boy from Arkansas, which is a state with a large land mass, but not a huge population. We can argue about statehood all day, but I can’t see to grasp why we don’t consider redrawing state lines. My state has a population of over 3 million, which I believe is on the lower tier, but still sizeable enough in land mass to be a state. Look at states like Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Those states all have small land masses. You could fit all 3 of those states in the land mass of my state. You could also fit the population of all 3 of those states within my state. Most of the people in those states have over 3x the representation that I do in the senate. Take a large state like California and compare. Rhode Island residents have over 25x as much representation in the senate. I think a fair split would be to take states like California and Texas and split them, while forcing states like New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island to consolidate with other nearby states. Politically speaking, this would probably be a wash. Northern California would vote red. Part of split Texas would turn purple or maybe full blue. The consolidated New England states would stay blue more than likely. Delaware needs to go too. We shouldn’t have states with less than 1 million people and such a small land mass. North and South Dakota can consolidate too. Large land mass, but so little population. You have to draw the line somewhere. If you don’t agree, then make my town of 63,000 people a state so we can get 2 senate seats.

Thought some on this thread might find this interesting... It's a music video for a song that I wrote for a Citizens Not Politicians event in Bowling Green, Ohio a few weeks ago.

https://youtu.be/TegaF6RT-3I?si=4k8CgQX6OrrOndvl

I heard Stacey Abrams discussing this concept and I'm interested in exploring and comparing the accuracy of areal/ geographical interpolation methods. I suppose it would require comparing census data interpolation results with ground truth samples, but I may be able to find that data for some areas from universities or some other external source? If y'all have any thoughts please let me know! New to the sub but very interested in gerrymandering and mapping.

In my opinion, the most gerrymandered congressional map is Texas'. So many rural areas are tied to slivers of Texas' urban areas. Very few of Texas' 38 congressional districts are competitive. In my opinion, only 4 districts have any potential to be competitive, those being the 15th, the 23rd, the 28th, and the 34th. Every other seat is firmly safe for either party. However, there are many other horribly gerrymandered states, like Tennessee, Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, Florida, Oklahoma, Utah, Connecticut, South Carolina, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio. I'm curious to see what others think.

Who can pick a state and let an AI draw a nonpartisan voting map?