Reform #4. End gerrymandering

No comparable democracy in the world lets its sitting legislators draw their own districts.¹ In 2025, six states did exactly that. The wave began in Texas, where Republican lawmakers redrew the state's congressional map mid-decade to add five seats before the 2026 midterms.² Missouri, North Carolina, California, Ohio, and Utah followed within months.³ It was the largest off-cycle redistricting cycle since the 1960s.⁴ Public reaction was unambiguous in every poll taken at the time.

An NBC News Decision Desk poll of more than 30,000 adults, conducted as Texas was finalizing its new map, found that 82 percent of Americans prefer that congressional districts be drawn by nonpartisan commissions rather than by the party in power.⁵ The number held across partisan lines and across state political contexts. In Republican-controlled states, 71 percent of Republicans preferred nonpartisan commissions. In Democratic-controlled states, 88 percent of Democrats preferred the same.⁶ Even when their own party stood to benefit from gerrymandering, voters of both parties said they would rather it stopped.

A separate national poll conducted in the same weeks by Noble Predictive Insights for Common Cause found 77 percent of voters supporting independent commissions over state legislators.⁷ Fifty-seven percent of Republicans, 76 percent of Democrats, and 72 percent of independents said it is bad for the country when one political party controls how districts are drawn.⁸ Sixty percent of voters who supported Donald Trump in 2024 told the same pollster that Congress should step in to stop mid-decade redistricting.⁹

Where voters have been given a direct ballot choice on the question, they have answered consistently. Redistricting reform appeared on the ballot in five states in 2018, and every measure passed. Ohio approved Issue 1 with 75 percent of the vote in May.¹⁰ In November, Colorado approved Amendments Y and Z with 71 percent each,¹¹ Michigan approved Proposal 2 with 61 percent,¹² Missouri approved Amendment 1 with 62 percent,¹³ and Utah approved Proposition 4 with 50.3 percent.¹⁴

In every case the reform was approved by voters, and in two of the five it was rolled back or weakened afterward by state legislators. In 2020, Missouri's General Assembly referred Amendment 3 to the ballot, undoing most of the redistricting changes voters had approved two years earlier.¹⁵ Utah's legislature passed Senate Bill 200 the same year, weakening the commission and giving lawmakers authority to override its maps.¹⁶ The Utah Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the legislature had acted unconstitutionally, and in 2025 and 2026 the legislature attempted to repeal Proposition 4 outright through a ballot measure that ultimately failed to qualify.¹⁷ When voters approve redistricting reform, the legislators whose seats it affects often do not accept the result.

The federal reform that would address this has been written and reintroduced for fifteen years. The For the People Act, H.R. 1 in the 117th Congress, required every state to establish an independent redistricting commission to draw congressional maps and banned mid-decade redistricting nationally. It passed the Democratic-controlled House on March 3, 2021, by a vote of 220 to 210, with every Republican voting against.¹⁸ In the Senate, a motion to begin debate failed on a 50 to 50 party-line vote on June 22, 2021, with every Republican opposed and every Democrat in favor, ten votes short of the 60 needed to invoke cloture.¹⁹ A revised version, the Freedom to Vote Act, came up for cloture on January 19, 2022, and failed 49 to 51 on a substantively party-line vote, again with every Republican opposed.²⁰ A subsequent motion to allow a talking-filibuster carve-out for voting rights legislation failed 48 to 52, with Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats, joining every Republican in voting against the rule change.²¹

The bill has been reintroduced in every Congress since. The most recent version, the Redistricting Reform Act of 2025, was introduced on September 18, 2025, by Representative Zoe Lofgren in the House and Senator Alex Padilla in the Senate.²² At the time of writing, the House version had 55 cosponsors and the Senate version had three.²³ No Republicans have signed on. Both bills sit in the Judiciary Committee.²⁴

Eight in ten Americans want what the bill would do, and the legislators whose seats depend on the lines are the ones being asked to give up the pen.

Footnotes

1. Drew DeSilver, "The US stands out globally in how it draws legislative districts," Pew Research Center, December 19, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/19/us-stands-out-globally-in-how-it-draws-legislative-districts/ ↩

2. J. David Goodman and Reid J. Epstein, "Texas Republicans Pass New Congressional Maps Drawn to Help G.O.P.," The New York Times, August 21, 2025. ↩

3. Ballotpedia, "Redistricting ahead of the 2026 elections"; National Conference of State Legislatures, "Changing the Maps: Tracking Mid-Decade Redistricting." https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_ahead_of_the_2026_elections and https://www.ncsl.org/redistricting-and-census/changing-the-maps-tracking-mid-decade-redistricting ↩

4. Drew DeSilver, "Redistricting between censuses has been rare in the modern era," Pew Research Center, August 28, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/28/redistricting-between-censuses-has-been-rare-in-the-modern-era/ ↩

5. Scott Bland, "Poll: Most Americans oppose political parties drawing election lines," NBC News, September 7, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-americans-oppose-political-parties-drawing-election-lines-rcna229257 ↩

6. Same source. ↩

7. Common Cause, "September Poll: 64% of Republican and Independent Voters Want Ban for Mid-Decade Redistricting," September 10, 2025. https://www.commoncause.org/press/september-poll-64-of-republican-and-independent-voters-want-ban-for-mid-decade-redistricting/ ↩

8. Same source. ↩

9. Same source. ↩

10. Ohio Secretary of State, official certified results for the May 8, 2018 primary election: Issue 1 approved with 74.89 percent. https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Issue_1,_Congressional_Redistricting_Procedures_Amendment_(May_2018) ↩

11. Colorado Secretary of State, certified 2018 general election results. https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Results/Abstract/2018/general/amendProp.html ↩

12. Michigan Department of State, certified 2018 general election results: Proposal 2 approved with 61.3 percent. https://ballotpedia.org/Michigan_Proposal_2,_Independent_Redistricting_Commission_Initiative_(2018) ↩

13. Missouri Secretary of State, certified 2018 general election results: Amendment 1 approved with 62 percent. https://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Amendment_1,_Lobbying,_Campaign_Finance,_and_Redistricting_Initiative_(2018) ↩

14. Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office, certified 2018 general election results: Proposition 4 approved with 50.34 percent. https://ballotpedia.org/Utah_Proposition_4,_Independent_Advisory_Commission_on_Redistricting_Initiative_(2018) ↩

15. Missouri Secretary of State, certified 2020 general election results: Amendment 3 approved with 51 percent. https://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Amendment_3,_Redistricting_Process_and_Criteria,_Lobbying,_and_Campaign_Finance_Amendment_(2020) ↩

16. Utah Senate Bill 200 (2020), signed by Governor Gary Herbert on March 26, 2020. ↩

17. League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature, 2024 UT 21 (July 11, 2024). https://ballotpedia.org/Utah_Eliminate_the_Independent_Redistricting_Commission_Initiative_(2026) ↩

18. U.S. House of Representatives, Roll Call Vote 62, March 3, 2021, on the For the People Act (H.R. 1, 117th Congress). The bill passed 220 to 210. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202162. See also https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/annotated-guide-people-act-2021 ↩

19. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote 226, 117th Congress, 1st Session, June 22, 2021. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00226.htm ↩

20. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote 9, 117th Congress, 2nd Session, January 19, 2022. The recorded vote was 49 to 51; Majority Leader Charles Schumer switched his vote to "no" at the end so he could move to reconsider under Senate rules, making the substantive partisan split 50 Democrats and independents in favor and 50 Republicans against. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00009.htm ↩

21. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote 10, 117th Congress, 2nd Session, January 19, 2022. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00010.htm ↩

22. Office of Senator Alex Padilla, "Padilla, Lofgren Introduce Redistricting Reform Act to Ban Mid-Decade Gerrymanders and Establish Independent Commissions," September 18, 2025. https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/padilla-lofgren-introduce-redistricting-reform-act-to-ban-mid-decade-gerrymanders-and-establish-independent-commissions/ ↩

23. Cosponsor counts as of late 2025 from Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5449/cosponsors and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2885/cosponsors ↩

24. H.R. 5449 and S. 2885, both referred to the Judiciary Committee on September 18, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5449 and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2885 ↩