Bloomberg: How to avoid an electoral manipulation war

Texas’s new redistructuring plan in the US challenges the delicate political balance and raises doubts about the integrity of the electoral process

The republican effort of redesigning Texas electoral districts, led by President Donald Trump, has aroused concerns between experts on the integrity of the redistructing process and its impact on political representativeness. The case clearly shows how electoral mapping can become an instrument of party advantage rather than reflecting the balanced will of voters.

Redistritement is, by definition, a complex equilibrium exercise. Reformists and electoral law experts usually seek to reduce party bias, ensure that non -white voters have real chances of electing representatives from their own community and creating competitive districts.

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However, these goals do not always go together and often conflict. Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice of the University of New York Law School, points out that “redistructuring always involves balancing goals,” summarizing the difficulty of achieving an ideal electoral map.

After the 2020 census, the congressional maps adopted by states seemed to have found a balance, albeit imperfect, among these principles. Despite lawsuits of civil rights groups in several southern states to expand the representation of black and Hispanic candidates, there were no generalized allegations of minority rights deprivation.

Studies indicate that post -2020 district lines are significantly less biased in favor of any party than the late twentieth-century maps, which favored the Democrats, or the plans adopted in the early 21st century, which benefited Republicans.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at the Harvard Law School and a specialist in redistructuring, describes the current composition of the House as “unusual in the modern era because it is very close to perfect neutrality, according to various partisan bias measures.”

According to him, current maps allow the party that obtains most of the national votes have great chances of winning the majority in the House, an evolution compared to 2012, when party manipulation allowed Republicans to win 33 more chairs, even with democrats over the national popular vote.

However, a critical point remains the low competitiveness among the districts. Although current district lines are relatively impartial, this neutrality does not result from conscious efforts to create fair maps, but rather from republican and democratic compensations, which guarantee safe chairs for each party.

Brennan Center found that states under republican control tend to create little competition districts, reflected in the 2024 election, when only 37 disputes were decided by margins of five percentage points or less, while 235 resulted in wins with a difference of over 25 points.

Electoral geography, with democrats focused on large urban and republican centers in smaller areas, naturally limits the number of competitive districts, but Stephanopoulos warns that there would be much more fierce disputes if the eyeliner did not prioritize the safety of chairs for their parties.

If Texas goes on with its new redistructuring plan, it can destabilize the delicate party balance achieved in the last maps. Republicans are expected to be able to guarantee about half a dozen additional chairs in the House before 2026, creating a significant advantage without, however, returning to the pro-republican inclination level seen after 2010.

Sam Wang, president of Princeton University’s Electoral Innovation Laboratory, states that this movement would end the playing field virtually neutral and require Democrats to win the House’s national vote for 2 to 3 percentage points just to recover the majority.

At the same time, a total war of redistructuring would aggravate one of the biggest problems of current maps: the lack of electoral competition. Both states dominated by Republican and Democrats would probably further reduce the already small number of really disputable chairs among the parties.

This would make it harder for voters to express discontent with the actions of their representatives, weakening political accountability.

In addition, more “secure” chairs tend to feed polarization, as legislators in strong party slope districts are more afraid of losing a primary election to ideologically compromised activists than a general election, determined by undecided voters.

Experts point out that the most effective solution would be the creation of national legislation that establishes clear and comprehensive rules for redistructuring. In 2021, the House controlled by Democrats approved the HR 1 project, known as the comprehensive electoral reform, which would require states to use independent commissions to draw districts and apply national standards to the whole process.

Among the proposed measures were the ban on party bias, the maintenance of the geographical continuity of the districts and the ban on redesign districts in the middle of the decade – exactly what Texas Republicans try to do it now. Although the senate -negotiated version was removed from the independent committees, it maintained national standards.

According to Waldman, “even the Senate bill would have interrupted what is happening now.” However, he failed due to republican obstruction in October 2021 after Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refuse to suspend the obstruction rule to approve it.

Nevertheless, there are still alternatives to limit gerrymandering. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2019, in the Rucho case, that federal courts cannot annul party gerrymanders, but actions in state courts may still offer some control.

Stephanopoulos and his team at Harvard’s Electoral Law clinic helped to make a lawsuit in Wisconsin, arguing that the extreme lack of competition on the state map of the constitutional promise of equal protection and the right to vote.

In the long run, some reformers even defend the return to the early nineteenth century model, in which several members were elected in a single district, as a way to guarantee greater justice and electoral competition.

Even so, the approval of federal legislation that imposes clear rules remains the most viable strategy to prevent the country from diving in a unbridled race of electoral manipulation.

Republicans have never shown great interest in this kind of truce, but the perspective of prolonged confrontation – which Sam Wang describes as “a situation of Cuban electoral manipulation missile crisis” – could convince some legislators to reconsider. Without this intervention, the United States is in danger of entering a distorted scenario, where rulers choose their voters, not the other way around.

The debate on redistructuring, therefore, is not just a technical issue: it is a dispute over the very essence of American democracy and the population’s ability to influence those who represent it.

And while Texas prepares for its next chapter in this clash, the attention of the whole country turns to the possibility of a new party balance – or to an even more polarized and rigid scenario, where competition and electoral justice are increasingly threatened.

With information from Bloomberg*