It seems like every year there is a story about how the United States is more politically divided than ever, to the point in which some are manipulating the way basic democracy is done in order to achieve extra votes. As President Trump pushes for the congressional redistricting of various states in order to assure his party stays in power during his presidency, the Republicans in GOP-governed Indiana voted against it to favor democracy over allegiance to their party.
To many, Trump’s push for redistricting in order for traditionally Republican-voting states to receive more congressional seats is a blatant form of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is an unfair, yet sadly common, tactic in order to redraw and rig voting maps to favor specific politicians or political parties. This method has been used from incumbents to retain their seats of power for upcoming elections, undermining voters.
As of this writing, the GOP-controlled Texas has redrawn their maps to favor five additional seats for Republicans and Democrats in California voted to redraw their maps in response. This had led to Trump encouraging other red states to redistrict, but his own party members in Indiana broke rank to keep their current map and let the voters decide who to represent them in the 2026 midterm elections. These Republicans also are reported to have received violent threats regarding this vote along with upsetting the President.
The hope of several politicians, including former ones like Arnold Schwarzenegger, is that gerrymandering is something that is universally reviled by all political parties and “terminated” as Arnold would put it.
Douglas J. Amy of FairVote.Org shares how discarding gerrymandering tactics could be achieved:
“The only sure way to eliminate gerrymandering – both intentional and unintentional – from American elections is to abandon single-member plurality arrangements and adopt proportional representation. Indeed, the whole purpose of PR is to minimize wasted votes and ensure that the parties are represented in proportion to the votes they receive. This eliminates the possibilities of unfair representation produced by gerrymandering. The key to eliminating partisan gerrymandering is the large multimember districts used in PR systems.As numerous studies have shown, as long as a PR system has at least five seats in every district, it is effectively immune from gerrymandering.These districts largely eliminate the wasted votes that make gerrymandering possible. In such districts, even small political minorities do not waste their votes and are able to elect their fair share of representatives. Thus, under PR arrangements, where voters live or how district lines are drawn makes no difference – fair representation will result.”
It is indeed still a turbulent political landscape that will still be filled with disagreement, however this move by Republican Hoosiers allows the fights to be more fair and encourages politicians to work together for the people’s will rather than their own party’s. On the same day Indiana rejected the gerrymandering, a few GOP senators sided with Democrats for a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies after months of contention and a government shutdown over them. This, too, leads to hope and a possible trend that disagreement and debate leads to better outcomes over outright party allegiance at any cost.
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