Election 2026: Here come the gerrymanderers

Thomas L. Knapp

Photo by Avens O’Brien

Redistricting in Arizona

In 2000, Arizona voters passed Proposition 106, a citizen initiative that amended the state Constitution and transferred responsibility for drawing congressional and state legislative districts from the state legislature to an independent commission.

The most recent Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission was appointed in January 2021 and finished its work in June 2024. A new commission is scheduled to be appointed in January 2031.

For more information on the commission, its work and current district maps, visit irc.az.gov.

It’s only mid-2025, but both “major” political parties are already well into their campaigns to win U.S. House and Senate seats in the 2026 midterm elections. They’re talking up potential candidates, trotting out actual candidates, and, in the case of the House, going all-out to ensure that those pesky voters don’t get in the way of partisan ambitions.

Their current election-rigging schemes revolve around the decennial practice of “redistricting” based on the most recent U.S. census.

Their tool/tactic of choice is called “gerrymandering,” after a Massachusetts newspaper noticed that the boundaries of a state senate district created under legislation signed by then-Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812 resembled a salamander.

In Texas and Missouri, Republican-dominated state legislatures are trying to figure out how to maximize the number of House seats held by the GOP, and minimize the number of House seats held by Democrats, after next year’s elections. In California, New York and Maryland the parties’ positions are reversed.

One perpetual wrench in the machinery of redistricting is race. Historically, Black civil rights groups have held that districts must be drawn so as to allow Black voters to support “the candidate of their choice,” as if the race of a candidate is or should be the sole factor Black voters consider in choosing a member of Congress.

Personal honesty compels me to insert here that I doubt the efficacy and legitimacy of “representative democracy” at all. Not only do I disapprove of giving government any significant power or authority, but I find the idea of a single politician “representing” the interests of both myself and the other 750,000 or so people in “my district” silly in the extreme.

That said, if we’re going to do this thing, partisan goals and ethnic divisions shouldn’t be part of the calculation. “Redistricting” should be this simple:

First, figure out how many House districts a state is entitled to.

Second, plug the state’s population data into software that chooses a random point within the state and draws the most compact districts possible, from that point, based on population density.

No accounting for partisan voter registration. No accounting for clusters of different ethnicities. One person, one vote, period.

We should no more draw congressional districts based on the proportion of Republicans to Democrats or the proportion of whites to Blacks to Latinos, etc., than we should draw them on the proportion of plumbers to sous chefs or the proportion of Led Zeppelin fans to Swifties.

Gerrymandering isn’t about representing the interests of voters, whether as individuals or members of groups. Gerrymandering is about the desires of the country’s two main political parties to maximize their power at the expense of each other’s.

Ending gerrymandering wouldn’t solve the myriad problems with “representative democracy,” nor would it solve our biggest problem: The poverty of expecting political power to actually resolve our conflicts.

It would, however, reduce the “obviously rigged clown show” element in our elections, perhaps freeing up our time and energy so that we can start addressing those larger issues.

Editor’s note: Thomas L. Knapp is a director and senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, where this was first published. He lives in north central Florida. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.