The End of Gerrymandering

We've talked about gerrymandering — how politicians draw district lines to choose their voters instead of the other way around. We've talked about how Wisconsin fought all the way to the Supreme Court to get fairer state legislative maps, and how the congressional maps are still gerrymandered. But what if the lines didn't matter that much in the first place?

With single-member districts, drawing the lines is the game. Shift a few neighborhoods from one district to another and you can flip the outcome. But in a multi-member district that elects five representatives proportionally, there's almost nothing you can do with the lines to rig the result. If a party wins forty percent of the vote, they get roughly forty percent of the seats. Period.

Multi-member districts take the power away from maps and the backroom deals and gives it back to you, the voter.

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Why multi-member districts eliminate gerrymandering: In single-member districts, shifting a few neighborhoods across a boundary can flip the outcome — that's how gerrymandering works. In a 5-member district with proportional voting, moving those same neighborhoods barely changes the result because seats are allocated proportionally. The more seats per district, the less the lines matter. (Protect Democracy)

FairVote simulations show that under proportional ranked-choice voting, seat shares closely match vote shares regardless of how district lines are drawn. The efficiency gap — the primary metric for measuring gerrymandering — essentially disappears under proportional systems. (FairVote)

The math makes it impossible. In a 5-member district, a party needs roughly 17% of the vote to win one seat. That means even a minority party in any region can win representation. You can't "pack" or "crack" voters when the threshold for winning a seat is that low — there's no way to draw lines that waste enough votes to lock a party out. (Sightline Institute)

The national redistricting arms race proves the point. Six states redrew their maps between 2024 and 2026 for partisan advantage. Independent redistricting commissions help, but they can be overridden (as California's was via ballot measure). Multi-member districts are the structural solution — they make the weapon useless rather than trying to keep it out of the wrong hands. (See CM-12, The Redistricting Arms Race)

The Fair Representation Act (H.R. 4632) would implement this at the federal level for U.S. House elections — multi-member districts with proportional ranked-choice voting. (FairVote)

Related Civic Minute segments: Packing and Cracking (CM-5), The Redistricting Arms Race (CM-12), How Multi-Member Districts Work (CM-14), What It Would Take (CM-17)