Pretzel Districts Silence You—One Page of Rules Fixes Congress...
If a Map Needs a Lawyer to Explain, It Fails—Independent Drawings Now!
The Gerrymander Arms Race: Welcome to the Knife Fight
So here we are again. Yesterday it was about whether non citizens should be counted in the census. Today it has morphed into a bare knuckle brawl over congressional redistricting. And would you look at that, Republicans finally learned to play the Democrats favorite game. The rule is simple, redraw the lines until your side wins more seats than your votes deserve.
Democrats are howling like someone just stole their lunch money. Which is funny, since they have been running this racket for years. Spare me the pearl clutching.
It is the same playground scene we all remember.
“You are full of beans, and so is your old man.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh yeah, and your mother wears Army boots.”
Only now the playground is the entire country, and the swing set is the House of Representatives.
Look at the scoreboard. New Jersey, nine of twelve seats blue while Republicans pull almost half the vote. Illinois, fourteen of seventeen seats blue on a slim vote edge. Massachusetts, all nine seats, zero competition. Oregon, five of six with a big seat bonus. That is not an accident. That is a business plan.
And nothing proves the business plan like Illinois Fourth, the famous earmuffs.
The Earmuffs, a picture that shouts
Two dense Hispanic communities in Chicago, a Puerto Rican pocket to the north and a Mexican American stronghold to the south, lashed together by a skinny corridor along the expressway. The corridor barely has people in it. The shape did not fall from the sky. In the nineties a federal court said Illinois needed a Latino majority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and the map makers delivered, with flair.
Is it gerrymandering or representation? Yes, both truths can live in the same map. The shape concentrates power in one district, and it also ensures a community is not sliced into six pieces and silenced. But if you want a visual of how elastic this game has become, this is the poster child.
Reality versus reasonable
Illinois 4th, real world
Yeah, that makes sense! I’m just not sure where in anyone’s world it makes sense, but you can be sure the Democrats will do everything they can to make you think that by looking at it, you will think this makes any sense at all. And Day is Night, Up is down and Black is White!
Compact district example
The second one shows a clean, contiguous district that looks like a place people actually live in. Words jab, but this comparison is a punch to the jaw.
The left would have you believe they had nothing to do with the Illinois gerrymandering. While the Republicans are saying, you have been doing this for years and now that we are in power we are going to do this. I have seen numbers, like as many as 42 new Republican districts will be created…a huge loss for the Democrats.
Of course the Democrats will kick and scream all the way to huge losses in the mid-terms in 2026 and a likely loss in the next Presidential election in 2028.
Republicans are now using the same playbook in places like Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, with an eye on padding their numbers or protecting soft seats. Many GOP legislators wanted to avoid this fight, since map drama irritates moderates and invites lawsuits. Then Democrats turned the volume to eleven, and the base told Republicans to go for the jugular. Here we are.
So what is the real play. Outrage is unifying the left, and it is also a stage for a few governors with national ambitions. They do not have to change the maps, they only have to look like fighters while Republicans take the dare and redraw even more.
The bottom line
Both parties maneuver for advantage. Democrats built this machine in many blue states, and now Republicans are driving the same model. In a national arms race like this, the side with a structural edge will push it. That is the game. The only honest fix is independent map making with real teeth, chosen outside the legislature, with rules that reward compactness, keep communities intact, and stop the endless packing and cracking.
The chances of that happening are about as great as Congress voting itself term limits. In other words, the world is more likely to be destroyed by an asteroid before the next election where these changes will be in effect.
Until that happens, do not pee on my leg and tell me it is raining. This is a knife fight, and both sides brought their favorite blades.
Image credits
Illinois Fourth, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 4.0. Iowa Third, National Atlas public domain via Ballotpedia (public domain).