A Call for Redistricting Reform: Exploring Proportional Representation

The redistricting challenges of 2026 highlight an urgent need for comprehensive reform. Traditional solutions like nonpartisan redistricting commissions are inadequate. Real change requires new approaches to address the shrinking number of competitive U.S. House districts, projected to drop to around 22, which is less than 5% of total districts. This decline fuels political polarization by intensifying competition in primaries, empowering more extreme candidates and hindering compromise.

The Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act, removing essential checks on partisan and racial gerrymandering. This makes it difficult to ensure fair and competitive U.S. House elections or equitable representation for minorities. One suggested remedy involves mandating that nonpartisan commissions handle all congressional districting. Currently, at least 10 states use commissions for drafting redistricting plans, and they play advisory roles in others.

While these commissions are beneficial compared to allowing politicians to draw district lines, their effectiveness varies. Some commissions have produced partisan-biased outcomes, and courts have nullified a few commission-drawn maps as illegal gerrymanders. Such issues arise because human involvement often introduces bias. More significantly, demographic sorting presents challenges. Democrats and minorities tend to cluster in urban areas, while Republicans are more dispersed. When creating single-member districts of equal population, this distribution leads to inadvertent gerrymandering, predominantly impacting Democrats.

Addressing this imbalance without compromising on district equality or minority representation is challenging. A potential solution is to minimize district drawing and shift away from single-member districts and winner-take-all elections. Implementing proportional representation can rectify current disparities. Under winner-take-all, a slight majority can control all power, leaving minorities without representation. Proportional representation, in contrast, ensures that a group’s political strength is reflected in its legislative power.

This system is prevalent in industrial democracies worldwide and some U.S. cities. In the U.S., proportional representation can be achieved via ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to rank candidates. Cities like New York, San Francisco, and states like Maine and Alaska use it. A single transferable vote system is another variant, used in Minneapolis, Portland, and Amherst, Massachusetts. It tends to yield more equitable outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities.

The Fair Representation Act, pending in Congress, offers a framework for applying single transferable vote to the U.S. House. States with fewer than six House seats would hold at-large elections with this system, effectively eliminating gerrymandering opportunities. For larger states, a nonpartisan commission would define a few multimember districts, each electing several House members.

This approach complicates gerrymandering attempts, reduces district numbers, and provides proportional representation benefits to diverse political groups. It addresses the spoiler dilemma by transferring votes from non-winning candidates to others based on voter preferences. This system opens opportunities for less prominent parties and increases voter turnout.

If Democrats regain control of Congress, prioritizing redistricting reform aligns with both their strategic interests and broader democratic principles. Moving beyond single-member districts benefits all by creating a more representative electoral system.

Steven Mulroy, author of “Rethinking U.S. Election Law: Unskewing The System,” is a former voting section litigator for the U.S. Justice Department, a past law professor, and the current district attorney for Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee.