As gerrymandering battles sweep country, supporters say partisan
dominance is 'fair'
[December 15, 2025]
By DAVID A. LIEB
When Indiana adopted new U.S. House districts four years ago, Republican
legislative leaders lauded them as “fair maps” that reflected the
state's communities.
But when Gov. Mike Braun recently tried to redraw the lines to help
Republicans gain more power, he implored lawmakers to "vote for fair
maps.”
What changed? The definition of “fair.”
As states undertake mid-decade redistricting instigated by President
Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats are using a tit-for-tat
definition of fairness to justify districts that split communities in an
attempt to send politically lopsided delegations to Congress. It is
fair, they argue, because other states have done the same. And it is
necessary, they claim, to maintain a partisan balance in the House of
Representatives that resembles the national political divide.
This new vision for drawing congressional maps is creating a
winner-take-all scenario that treats the House, traditionally a more
diverse patchwork of politicians, like the Senate, where members reflect
a state's majority party. The result could be reduced power for minority
communities, less attention to certain issues and fewer distinct voices
heard in Washington.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky fears that unconstrained
gerrymandering would put the United States on a perilous path, if
Democrats in states such as Texas and Republicans in states like
California feel shut out of electoral politics. “I think that it’s going
to lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our
country,” he said Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press.”
Although Indiana state senators rejected a new map backed by Trump and
Braun that could have helped Republicans win all nine of the state’s
congressional seats, districts have already been redrawn in Texas,
California, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Other states could
consider changes before the 2026 midterms that will determine control of
Congress.
“It’s a fundamental undermining of a key democratic condition,” said
Wayne Fields, a retired English professor from Washington University in
St. Louis who is an expert on political rhetoric.
“The House is supposed to represent the people,” Fields added. “We gain
an awful lot by having particular parts of the population heard.”
Redistricting is diluting community representation
Under the Constitution, the Senate has two members from each state. The
House has 435 seats divided among states based on population, with each
state guaranteed at least one representative. In the current Congress,
California has the most at 52, followed by Texas with 38.
Because senators are elected statewide, they are almost always political
pairs of one party or another. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the only
states now with both a Democrat and Republican in the Senate. Maine and
Vermont each have one independent and one senator affiliated with a
political party.
By contrast, most states elect a mixture of Democrats and Republicans to
the House. That is because House districts, with an average of 761,000
residents, based on the 2020 census, are more likely to reflect the
varying partisan preferences of urban or rural voters, as well as
different racial, ethnic and economic groups.
This year's redistricting is diminishing those locally unique districts.
In California, voters in several rural counties that backed Trump were
separated from similar rural areas and attached to a reshaped
congressional district containing liberal coastal communities. In
Missouri, Democratic-leaning voters in Kansas City were split from one
main congressional district into three, with each revised district
stretching deep into rural Republican areas.
Some residents complained their voices are getting drowned out. But
Govs. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., and Mike Kehoe, R-Mo., defended the
gerrymandering as a means of countering other states and amplifying the
voices of those aligned with the state's majority.
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This photo taken from video shows organizers rallying outside of the
Ohio Statehouse to protest gerrymandering and advocate for lawmakers
to draw fair maps in Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 17, 2025. (AP
Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos, File)
All is `fair' in redistricting
Indiana's delegation in the U.S. House consists of seven Republicans
and two Democrats — one representing Indianapolis and the other a
suburban Chicago district in the state's northwestern corner.
Dueling definitions of fairness were on display at the Indiana
Capitol as lawmakers considered a Trump-backed redistricting plan
that would have split Indianapolis among four Republican-leaning
districts and merged the Chicago suburbs with rural Republican
areas. Opponents walked the halls in protest, carrying signs such as
“I stand for fair maps!”
Ethan Hatcher, a talk radio host who said he votes for Republicans
and Libertarians, denounced the redistricting plan as “a blatant
power grab" that "compromises the principles of our Founding
Fathers" by fracturing Democratic strongholds to dilute the voices
of urban voters.
“It’s a calculated assault on fair representation," Hatcher told a
state Senate committee.
But others asserted it would be fair for Indiana Republicans to hold
all of those House seats, because Trump won the “solidly Republican
state” by nearly three-fifths of the vote.
“Our current 7-2 congressional delegation doesn’t fully capture that
strength,” resident Tracy Kissel said at a committee hearing. "We
can create fairer, more competitive districts that align with how
Hoosiers vote.”
When senators defeated a map designed to deliver a 9-0 congressional
delegation for Republicans, Braun bemoaned that they had missed an
“opportunity to protect Hoosiers with fair maps.”
Disrupting an equilibrium
By some national measurements, the U.S. House already is politically
fair. The 220-215 majority that Republicans won over Democrats in
the 2024 elections almost perfectly aligns with the share of the
vote the two parties received in districts across the country,
according to an Associated Press analysis.
But that overall balance belies an imbalance that exists in many
states. Even before this year's redistricting, the number of states
with congressional districts tilted toward one party or another was
higher than at any point in at least a decade, the AP analysis
found.
The partisan divisions have contributed to a “cutthroat political
environment” that “drives the parties to extreme measures," said
Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State
University. He noted that Republicans hold 88% of congressional
seats in Tennessee, and Democrats have an equivalent in Maryland.
“Fairer redistricting would give people more of a feeling that they
have a voice," Syler said.
Rebekah Caruthers, who leads the Fair Elections Center, a nonprofit
voting rights group, said there should be compact districts that
allow communities of interest to elect the representatives of their
choice, regardless of how that affects the national political
balance. Gerrymandering districts to be dominated by a single party
results in “an unfair disenfranchisement" of some voters, she said.
“Ultimately, this isn’t going to be good for democracy," Caruthers
said. "We need some type of détente.”
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