The practice of drawing electoral-district boundaries to favour one party. Two common techniques are "cracking" (splitting an opponent's voters across multiple districts to dilute their power) and "packing" (concentrating them into one district to limit how many seats they can win).
In 2018 Utah voters passed a ballot measure establishing a citizen redistricting commission to advise the legislature. The measure barred lawmakers from using partisan political data to draw maps or configuring districts to purposefully favour or disfavour a party or candidate. Instead of complying, in 2020 the Republican-dominated state legislature passed a bill rolling back parts of the measure. The congressional map it drew in 2021 "cracked" Salt Lake County—where most of the state's Democrats are concentrated—into four pieces, securing four safe Republican seats.
Good-governance groups and local residents, both Democrat and Republican, sued. The Utah Supreme Court sent the case to a lower court, where trial judge Dianna Gibson ruled in 2025 that the 2020 law "infringed the people's fundamental constitutional right to reform their government," and struck down the map. Lawmakers' replacement map, the "least competitive" of those on offer, would let Democrats contest perhaps one seat. A special-session bill also narrowed the statistical tests available for probing partisan balance. Utah's Republican Party is campaigning to repeal the original ballot measure—the latest of several attempts by conservatives to limit direct democracy in the state.
A pending Supreme Court case that could transform the redistricting landscape. Louisiana's congressional map is being challenged under section two of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted in 1965 and prohibits any state election rule that "results in a denial or abridgement" of a citizen's right to vote because of their race. In the past four decades 466 section-two cases have gone to court, most in the South and over local races such as city councils and school boards. In 2024 Shomari Figures, a black Democrat, was elected to Congress after a lawsuit forced Alabama to create a new majority-minority district stretching from Mobile to Montgomery.
Blacks are one-third of Louisiana's voters, but the map drawn after the 2020 census included only one majority-black district out of six. Black plaintiffs sued, and a court ordered the creation of a second such district. A group of "non-African American voters" then challenged that change, calling it "racially balkanising"; a different court struck down the redrawn map. At oral argument Chief Justice John Roberts and his five fellow conservative justices gave every indication they would bar race as a consideration when maps are drawn.
In practice, applying section two has constrained Republican partisan gerrymanders. If it is gutted, one estimate suggests Republicans could eliminate as many as 19 Democrat-held districts in the House of Representatives, or 9% of the party's current caucus. More realistic estimates put the number between six and 12, assuming Republicans take an aggressive approach, as they have recently in Texas, Missouri and Utah. Such a skewed electoral system would be akin to those adopted by dominant parties in illiberal democracies like Hungary and Singapore. America would be alone among its rich democratic peers.
In July 2025 Donald Trump began pressuring Republicans in Texas to carve up their congressional map to deliver five more seats for their party. This kicked off a national redistricting war without modern precedent that could eventually involve more than a dozen states.
When Texas passed its new map in August 2025, Gavin Newsom, California's governor, turned a bluff into an organised statewide campaign for Proposition 50, a ballot measure allowing the legislature to implement a new congressional map favouring Democrats through 2030. California's independent redistricting commission meant the legislature needed voter approval. Spending on Prop 50 neared $150m, with Democrats outraising Republicans two to one—making it one of the most expensive ballot measures ever.
Democrats also pressed lawmakers in Maryland, Illinois and Oregon about redrawing maps. On the Republican side, Missouri found another seat by splitting Kansas City; North Carolina added another Republican seat; Indiana's Republican governor warned his state would lose federal funds if it did not redistrict.
The last time mid-decade gerrymandering swept the country was during the Gilded Age, according to Nicholas Stephanopoulos of Harvard University. Things cooled down only when Republicans won handily.
On April 21st 2026 Virginia voters approved a redistricting referendum that gerrymanders an estimated 3-4 Republicans out of their seats. Democrats carried out the gerrymander as retaliation for Texas's Republican-led redistricting. With the new Virginia and California maps offsetting Republican gerrymanders, current district lines nationwide are almost perfectly fair overall—though extremely unfair within individual states.
In December 2025, 21 of 40 Republican state senators in Indiana joined all ten Democrats to vote down a bill to redraw congressional districts for partisan benefit. The vote came despite intense lobbying from Mr Trump, threats of primary challengers, withheld federal money and even death threats. Former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels observed that courage was contagious: as more senators spoke up, the numbers grew.
In May 2026 primaries at least five of the seven dissenting Republican legislators lost to Trump-endorsed challengers; roughly $13.5m was spent on ads, against a few hundred thousand dollars in previous Indiana legislative primaries, where part-time lawmakers earn $33,000 a year. The president deployed his campaign adviser Chris LaCivita and the Club for Growth, a Super PAC that normally plays only at the national level.
The Supreme Court delivered its ruling in Louisiana v Callais in April 2026 by 6-3, declaring that electoral maps can no longer be challenged on grounds of race—say, by arguing that district lines unfairly dilute black votes—as long as mapmakers claim to have drawn them strictly for partisan gain. It was the court's third big blow to the Voting Rights Act. After the ruling, Tennessee politicians carved up Memphis into three ruby-red congressional districts and Louisiana lawmakers moved to do the same to New Orleans. Courts are also weighing a Florida plan signed by Ron DeSantis that would give Republicans 24 of 28 seats in a state where 30% of voters are Democrats.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.