In Defense of Gerrymandering — And the Fight for Congress in 2026

This week the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a Democratic-backed congressional redistricting plan that could have shifted several House seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. Republicans celebrated the ruling as a major victory. Democrats called it political sabotage.

At nearly the same moment, Texas Republicans moved aggressively to strengthen their congressional advantage before the next election cycle, while California Democrats discussed countermeasures designed to offset Republican gains elsewhere. In Maryland, Senate President Bill Ferguson found himself under pressure inside his own party after resisting efforts to redraw districts for partisan advantage. The fight over the congressional redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterms is no longer happening quietly inside state legislatures.

The language on both sides was immediate and apocalyptic:

“Threat to democracy.”
“Rigged elections.”
“Power grab.”
“Election manipulation.”

But here is the uncomfortable reality Americans may not want to hear:

None of this is new.

Redistricting battles have been wars over control of Congress since the earliest days of the Republic.

What we are witnessing is not the collapse of the American system. It is the American system functioning the way ambitious political actors have always tried to make it function — to their favor.

That does not make it admirable. It certainly does not make it fair. But it is historically consistent.

One of the great mistakes modern Americans make is imagining that earlier generations operated from some purer moral altitude than our own. They did not. The founders were brilliant men, but they were also political men. They understood power, pursued power, protected power, and designed systems to limit the damage power could do when human beings inevitably abused it.

That is where this week’s debate over gerrymandering becomes far more important than a temporary fight between Republicans and Democrats.

The real issue is not whether politicians seek advantage.

The real issue is whether the constitutional system still contains enough restraints to survive their ambitions.

The term “gerrymandering” dates to 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting bill crafted to weaken the Federalist Party and strengthen Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans. One district was drawn in such an oddly twisted shape that a newspaper cartoonist turned it into a salamander-like creature and labeled it the “Gerry-Mander.”

The name survived because the practice survived…religiously invoked every decennial when, after the national census, congressional districts are reapportioned and redrawn.

And this venerable practice has not merely survived, it has flourished.

States gain seats. States lose seats. Population shifts alter political power. The Constitution itself mandates the process.

But from the very beginning, those in power recognized something obvious: if you can shape the district, you can often determine the outcome.

Modern critics treat gerrymandering as though it suddenly appeared with Donald Trump. History tells a different story.

Colonial Virginia practiced its own version of gerrymandering long before the Constitution existed. The House of Burgesses — America’s first representative assembly, established in Jamestown in 1619 — heavily favored the wealthy Tidewater planter class even as western counties grew in population and economic influence. Representation was not structured around equality. It was structured around preserving the dominance of those already in control.

And Virginia was hardly unique.

As more Supreme Court rulings shaped and reshaped election law, both parties increasingly viewed redistricting as a pre-election battlefield rather than a procedural necessity

In the decades before the American Revolution, colonial legislatures routinely protected established commercial and landholding interests through uneven representation. Coastal elites dominated assemblies while frontier populations exploded. Political power did not naturally distribute itself. It had to be fought over, negotiated, and occasionally torn loose.

That pattern repeated itself throughout American history.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776 that “all men are created equal,” enormous portions of the population were excluded from the practical application of those words. Women could not vote. Enslaved people had no political rights. Native Americans stood outside the constitutional framework entirely.

This is not an indictment of the American founding so much as a reminder of its tension: the nation was built upon extraordinary ideals while simultaneously being governed by deeply imperfect human beings.

Dr. Gary Kellner’s central point in this week’s Fair Game episode is that the framers understood that contradiction better than many modern Americans do.

James Madison, often called the father of the Constitution, did not design the American system around the assumption that leaders would behave virtuously. Quite the opposite.

Madison believed human beings were fallen creatures driven by ambition, fear, ego, greed, and what earlier generations might have called “human cussedness.” That is why the Constitution separates power between branches, between states and the federal government, and between competing institutions constantly pushing against one another.

Federalist No. 51 remains one of the clearest explanations of this philosophy ever written:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Madison did not trust kings with unlimited authority. He did not trust Congress with unlimited authority. He did not trust presidents, courts, governors, or political parties with unlimited authority.

Why?

Because he understood human nature.

And perhaps nowhere is human nature more visible than in the struggle to retain political power once it has been obtained.

That understanding matters now.

Much of today’s public outrage over gerrymandering is performative outrage — not because the concerns are false, but because they are selectively applied.

Republicans object loudly when Democrats redraw maps in Illinois, Maryland, or California.

Democrats object loudly when Republicans redraw maps in Texas, Florida, or Alabama.

Yet both parties pursue nearly identical strategies the moment they possess sufficient legislative power to do so.

The numbers reveal how consequential these maps can become. Analysts estimate that even a shift of three to five House seats nationally will determine control of Congress after the 2026 elections. That reality explains why both parties increasingly view redistricting not as an administrative process but as political warfare.

And increasingly, the courts are reluctant to stop them.

The Supreme Court entered the redistricting arena aggressively during the 1960s. In Baker v. Carr (1962), the Court ruled that federal courts could intervene in legislative apportionment disputes. Two years later, Reynolds v. Sims established the principle of “one person, one vote,” requiring legislative districts to maintain roughly equal populations.

Those decisions transformed American elections and made the system more accessible to more Americans than at any previous moment in American history. For decades afterward, courts became deeply involved in the structure of representation itself. Legislatures were forced to redraw maps. Rural power structures weakened. Urban and suburban populations gained greater influence. Federal judges increasingly became referees in the fight over who counted politically — and who did not.

More recently, the Court has stepped back.

In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts. Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that extreme partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles,” but concluded that the Constitution does not provide federal judges with a clear standard for deciding how much partisanship is too much.

In plain English: the Court essentially said this may be ugly, but it is primarily a political problem baked into our system.

Which means the battle shifts elsewhere — to governors, legislatures, state constitutions, independent commissions, and ultimately voters themselves.

That is precisely why this week matters.

The Virginia ruling.

The Texas strategy.

California’s response.

Maryland’s Senate tensions.

These are not isolated events. They are signs that both parties increasingly believe the next fight for Congress may be won before ballots are ever cast.

That belief changes the behavior of everyone involved.

It hardens rhetoric.
It increases suspicion.
It intensifies tribalism.
And it convinces voters that the game is rigged before Election Day arrives. Which means that elections do not matter.

That may be the most dangerous consequence of all.

A republic can survive fierce disagreement.
It can survive corruption scandals.
It can survive bitter elections.

What becomes harder to survive is widespread public belief that constitutional processes no longer possess legitimacy.

And yet, despite all the outrage, America has survived periods of political hardball before.

Franklin Roosevelt attempted to expand the Supreme Court after frustration with judicial reversal of popular New Deal legislation. Southern political machines manipulated voting systems for generations. Urban party bosses openly traded patronage for electoral loyalty. Reconstruction governments were dismantled through political intimidation of recently freed African Americans and legal maneuvering. Tammany Hall in New York operated like a parallel political kingdom for decades, dispensing favors and securing votes with astonishing efficiency.

American democracy has never been clean.

But it has proven resilient.

That resilience comes from the same constitutional friction Madison envisioned: competing ambitions restraining one another long enough for corrections to occur.

That does not mean the system is indestructible.

It means the founders expected conflict.

Modern Americans often talk as though politics should feel emotionally satisfying, morally pure, and universally fair. The founders would have found that expectation absurdly and dangerously naïve. Politics, to their understanding, did not entail eliminating interests but balancing the claims of competing interests.

That is why the separation of powers matters.
That is why federalism matters.
That is why states matter.
That is why courts matter.
That is why elections matter.

Each institution restrains another before any single faction gains too much control.

The danger today is not merely partisan advantage. The danger is the growing belief among ordinary Americans that the system itself is permanently illegitimate whenever their side loses.

That is corrosive.

A constitutional republic cannot survive if every electoral defeat is interpreted as proof of tyranny.

At the same time, citizens should not become complacent. There is a legitimate distinction between hardball politics and genuine disenfranchisement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 emerged because the election laws in Southern states systematically excluded as many as ninety-five percent of African Americans in some counties from voting.

That line still matters.

There are moments when political manipulation crosses into something darker — when districts are designed not merely to maximize advantage but to silence populations altogether. American history contains examples of both. Literacy tests. Poll taxes. Racial exclusions. Intimidation campaigns. Those abuses were not ordinary political combat. They were assaults on the rights of US citizens.

That distinction matters profoundly now.

Not every aggressive district map destroys democracy. But every district map raises an enduring democratic question:

Are politicians choosing voters, or are voters choosing politicians?

The answer has never been entirely pure in American history.

Perhaps that is exactly why the Constitution matters so much.

The founders did not create a perfect system.

They created a carefully balanced system.

A noisy system.

A frustrating system.

A system built on the assumption that flawed people would constantly compete for power.

And for more than two centuries, that tension — uncomfortable as it often is — has held.

The question facing the country now is whether Americans still possess enough civic maturity to live inside that tension without convincing themselves that every loss is illegitimate and every victory is tyranny.

Because once a nation loses faith not merely in politicians, but in the constitutional process itself, the danger becomes far greater than gerrymandering.

It becomes the slow erosion of the republic’s ability to trust its own operating system.

Reflection:

1. If you knew your party could lock in power for the next ten years by redrawing districts, would you support it?
2. Has American democracy quietly become a system where elections are decided long before Election Day?
3. Are Americans actually angry about gerrymandering — or just angry when their side loses control of it?