Election Policy Roundup #24: All About Redistricting

Walter Olson

Number 24 in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy, this time all about redistricting: 

• Handwriting was on the wall long ago for the Gingles standard with its requirement to draw safe minority districts, and what’s surprising is that it survived this long. [Richard Pildes, Bloomberg, who argues that “when Congress returns to this arena,” it should adopt a “model of strong universal protection for the voting rights of all citizens”]
• On the Virginia Supreme Court ruling striking down that state’s gerrymandering amendment: “My sense is that there were reasonable arguments on both sides in the case, which was decided 4–3 along party lines. The case turned on the meaning of when the ‘election’ started; it was a normal issue of statutory interpretation.” [Rick Hasen, Election Law Blog; that was my conclusion too on reading the opinions.]
• Together with Rucho, Callais could soon bring many state House delegations under a sort of statewide winner-take-all rule recalling the Electoral College. That would not be the first time; for about fifty years after the adoption of the Constitution, many states followed a “general ticket” arrangement, electing all House members at large, resulting in delegations all of one party [2024 Congressional Research Service report; Rucho slip op. at 16–17] But Congress banned “general ticket” arrangements in 1842. Maybe it had good reason? 
• This year’s US House elections could set a record for the lowest share of “structurally competitive” House seats, those being seats that either party has a reasonable chance of winning if the national electorate splits 50/50. [G. Elliott Morris] As “gerrymaxxing” proceeds, even if a state’s majority party has to concede a few seats to the opposition, it can draw lines so as to favor the opposition figures most terrifying to its own base, the better to define the adversary in public debate. [Justin Levitt] 
• Callais could also bring renewed momentum to the ongoing campaign to steer the House in the direction of proportional representation through the use of multimember districts, which would require, at minimum, repealing an existing federal law against multimember districts. [Guy-Uriel Charles et al., MSNow and Yale Law Journal; 2022 group letter; Tyler Boschert Bluesky thread]
• Remedies lying right in front of our noses: among anti-gerrymander reforms that drew intense interest in Congress during the 1960s but didn’t pass were rules requiring compactness in House districts (a national rule to that effect had already been in effect for two decades earlier in the century) and curbs on mid-decade redistricting. [Michael Rosin, University of St. Thomas Law Journal]