The editors of the Wall Street Journal beat me to the punch:
Some states have tried to hand redistricting to an ostensibly independent commission. Yet then it’s a partisan proxy battle, and commissions that are evenly split can end up deadlocked. Commissions can also tilt one way or another with a gerrymander-like result: See California, with 43 Democratic seats out of 52; or New Jersey, 9 Democrats out of 12.
But there’s an element of mutual assured destruction here, and Democrats don’t want to limit their ability to gerrymander if Republicans aren’t going to quit, and vice versa. That’s why a federal standard might be useful. States run their own voting processes, but Congress has broad power under the Constitution to regulate the “manner” of House elections. One option might be a law telling states they can’t redistrict mid-decade.
One cause of more frequent gerrymanders is judicial intervention in response to partisan lawsuits challenging maps. The Supreme Court has been moving in a helpful direction here. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Justices said partisan gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable question for the political branches. A case next term, Louisiana v. Callais, is an opportunity to remove judges from the political thicket of racial gerrymanders.
Congress could also impose substantive restrictions on state map-makers, such as some kind of mathematical test for partisan fairness or district compactness. Such formulas can be gamed, though, and it’s hard to see Republicans and Democrats agreeing on the details. Ditto for bigger reforms, such as expanding the size of the House from the current 435, where it has been stuck since 1913.
But telling states they can only redistrict once per decade might de-escalate the gerrymander wars, and it would mainly ratify the status quo of recent years. Both parties could benefit from this kind of disarmament treaty, and voters most of all.
The Congress has sufficient powers to end that “arms race” under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the “Congress and Elections Clause”. They should do it.
Just for the record I think that Congressional districts should be compact and not cross county and municipal borders to the degree possible. I also think that there should be more Congressional districts (at least twice as many as at present).
The irony of Texas Democratic legislators fleeing the state to preserve democracy while governors in California and New York threaten retaliatory redistricting on the same grounds seems to be lost on people.
I also think it is ironic that the Democrats are fleeing Texas for Illinois when Illinois has some of the wildest gerrymandered maps in the country. IL-15 is a poster child for Gerrymandering. This is probably lost on people as well.
I would love to see the judiciary removed from the process. In 1992, Tennessee Democrats drew state house districts putting 12 incumbent Republicans into 6 State House districts. After the election, a judge called the 1992 map unconstitutional so they drew the lines again in 1994. Six Republican incumbents were put in three House districts. Let’s have a one and done process. In two elections, I filed paperwork to run for the State House in three different sets of counties (all were TN-74).
For gerrymandering it’s pretty hard to beat the Illinois 4th Congressional District. When it was originally drawn that had a rationale. A poor rationale but at least it was a rationale. Nowadays the only rationale is to protect the incumbent.