Why You Should Vote for Proposition 50
Introduction
President Trump recently asked the governor and state legislature of Texas to re-draw the map of the state’s 38 U.S. congressional districts. After the election in November 2024, the Texas delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives consisted of 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats. One seat, representing a majority-Democratic district, remained vacant. So, we can assume that just prior to the election there were 25 Republican-majority and 13 Democratic-majority districts in Texas.
The President asked the governor and state legislature of Texas to re-draw the map of the state’s congressional districts to increase the number of Republican-majority districts by 5. This would increase the total number of Republican-majority districts in Texas to 30 and decrease the number of Democratic-majority districts to 7. The state legislature created a new map in August 2025 and the governor approved it.
The new map did not immediately change the partisan composition of the Texas delegation in Congress. Members of Congress serve for 2 years. The current delegation took office in 2025 after the 2024 elections and will serve until a new delegation takes office in 2027. We can expect redistricting to bring about a delegation in 2027 that consists of 30 Republicans and 8 Democrats—assuming that a Democrat will hold the currently unfilled seat.
The U.S. House of Representatives currently consists of 220 Republicans, 212 Democrats and 3 unfilled seats. Assuming no change other than the redistricting in Texas, the House of Representatives in 2027 to consist of 225 Republicans and 207 Democrats. This will, indeed, change the House, because Republicans will then be able to suffer as many as 8 defections on any vote and still have a majority. This will make it easier for the President and Republicans in Congress to realize their agenda—and more difficult for the Democrats to resist it. Missouri and Utah recently announced that they, too, would re-draw the maps of their congressional districts to increase the Republican majority in Congress even further, so the Democrats’ disadvantage may worsen.
How Congressional Districts are Created
The map of U.S. congressional districts is created in two steps. The first step determines how many districts each state will have. The second step determines the locations and boundaries of the districts in each state.
Determining the Number of Congressional Districts in Each State
This passage from Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution sets rules for determining the number of representatives that each state sends to the House of Representatives.
Representatives…shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers… The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative..."
This passage imposes several conditions on the process that determines how many representatives each state will have in the House of Representatives. The first condition stipulates that representatives are “apportioned among the several states…according to their respective Numbers.” This means that the number of individuals in a state’s population determines the number of representatives that it sends to congress.
Because state populations determine their representation in Congress, we need accurate counts of state populations. These change over time, so we need to update counts of the population periodically. This is why the Article 1, Section 2 stipulates that state populations shall be re-counted, and the number of congressional districts in each state re-calculated, every ten years. It is why the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce completes a census every ten years.
The Method of Equal Proportions
Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution thus envisions a process that uses counts of each state’s populations to determine the number of congressional districts in each state and, therefore, how many representatives each state will have in Congress. This is what Article 1 means when it says that representatives are apportioned among the several states according to their respective Numbers—i.e., according to their respective populations. What is this process?
Since 1941, Congress has used The Method of Equal Proportions to determine the number of congressional districts in each state and the number of representatives in each state’s congressional delegation. This Method assigns numbers of districts and representatives to each state, S, such that the population per representative in S is equal–or as nearly equal as possible–to the population per representative in every other state.
The population per representative in a state is equal to the population of the state divided by the number of congressional districts in the state. Because each state has one representative for each of its districts, the population per representative in a state is also equal to the population of the state divided by the number of representatives in the state’s congressional delegation.
There are 50 states represented in Congress. We could make a list of these: S1, S2, … S50. If this list were alphabetical, S1 would be Alabama (AL), S2 would be Alaska (AK), and so on until we reach S50, which would be Wyoming (WY). Following expression (1), then, we can express the population per representative for any state, Sn, in the same way:
The Problem of Equal Proportions
From the census, we know the population of each state; the problem is to assign a number of congressional districts and, therefore, representatives for each state. The Method of Equal Proportions does this by assigning a number of congressional districts to each state, in a way that makes the population per representative for any two states equal to one another, or as nearly equal as mathematically possible. The goal of The Method of Equal Proportions is that every member of Congress should represent. This ensures that every member of Congress represents approximately the same number of citizens and, in this sense, that the voice and vote of every member of Congress has the same weight.
Determining District Locations and Boundaries
Once Congress has assigned a number of districts to each state, it remains for states to determine the locations and borders of each district. In most cases, state legislatures specify district locations and borders in legislation subject to approval by their governors. There are, however, exceptions to this practice. In Arizona, California, and Michigan, for example, independent or bipartisan commissions draw the map of state legislative districts, rather than the legislature, and the maps are not approved by their governors.¹
Federal Law
Regardless of their authors, district maps must comply with federal law, which includes the following restrictions.
Equal Population: Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Wesbury v. Saunders (1964) requires that congressional districts must have equal, or nearly equal, populations. The Method of Equal Proportions applied to the most recent decennial census guarantees that the population of any district in any state will be equal, or nearly equal, to the population of any district in any other state.
Protection Against Racial Discrimination: The U.S. Constitution, 14th and 15th Amendments, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 make it illegal for states to draw congressional districts in a way that denies racial or language minorities the right to vote, or that diminishes the influence of their votes. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, for example, requires that racial and language minorities have the same opportunity as other citizens to “participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” The Voting Right Act prohibits states from splitting minority populations into separate districts in a way that prevents minority candidates from winning seats in Congress. The Voting Rights Act also prohibits “packing” minority populations into a single district for the purpose of limiting the number of seats held by representatives of such populations. More generally, in Shaw v. Reno (2013) and Miller v. Johnson (1995), the Supreme Court has ruled that race may not be the predominant factor that determined how a state drew its congressional maps.
Contiguity: Federal custom and case law require that all congressional districts within a state must be contiguous: For any two points within a single district, it must be possible to travel from one point to the other without leaving the district.
Respect for Minority Representation: The Voting Rights Act requires that state maps of congressional districts must avoid splitting minority communities into separate districts in a way that makes it unlikely that such communities will be able to elect a representative from either district. The Voting Rights Act also prohibits “packing” minority communities into one or a very few districts, once again, in a way that will limit their representation in Congress.
State Law and Compactness
Apart from federal requirements in re-districting, many state laws require that congressional districts have the property of compactness. Consider a district shaped like a very long, narrow arc, or that followed a serpentine path, winding long distances through the state. A state might draw such a district for geographic or demographic reasons. King and Queen County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, for example, is 10 miles wide, 63 miles long, and has the shape of two shallow arcs joined to one another, with one arc turning toward the south, and the other turning to the north. The state has this shape for historical and geographic regions: its borders follow the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers, one of which turns north and the other south.
A state might equally draw such districts for partisan reasons. For example, its objective might have been to gather together disparate regions that are dominated by a single party into a single district, to elect a representative from that party. This would not be illegal by federal law, although it might be illegal under the laws of one or more states. A state might also draw a district shaped like an arc or a serpent to concentrate a racial minority into a single district represented by a single member—when there might be enough minority-majority regions for the state to create several minority-majority congressional districts. This would be contrary to the U.S. Constitution and to the Voting Rights Act.
One way to mitigate the risk of districts drawn for partisan reasons, or to oppress minorities is to require that congressional districts have the additional property of compactness. We might say that districts that follow an arcing or serpentine path are not compact and this is why we suspect them of dark origins.
Federal law requires states to draw districts that are contiguous, have equal populations; and do not discriminate against racial or language groups. There is, however, no single, federal definition of compactness, and no federal constitutional or statutory rule explicitly requiring that congressional districts must be compact. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that the odd shape of a district might be evidence of partisan or racial influence of a kind prohibited by the federal law, but federal law does not define “compactness” and has not set a standard in law regarding it. To see why federal has not done this, consider the following examples.
There are many ways to define compactness in state law and in mathematics. Here is an example. Consider the district at left in Diagram 1 below. Let this be “District 1.” The district is ten-by-ten units and enclosed by a circle that intersects each of the four corners of the square. The circle in the left figure is the smallest circle that could enclose the left district—i.e., all of District 1 lies within the circle, and no smaller circle could enclose all of District 1. The district at right, “District 2” is rectangular and narrow. The district is five-by-twenty units in area, is also enclosed by a circle, and could not be enclosed by any smaller circle.
Diagram 1: Two Districts and the Smallest Circles that Enclose them
It seems natural not to be skeptical of District 1. It is simply square, like San Francisco County–which is seven miles by seven miles. We might, however, be skeptical about District 2, which is a very long, rectangular region. Why would someone create a district like this, if not for partisan or other malign reasons. Can we get rid of districts like this by claiming that while District 1 is compact, District 2 is not?
Here is an example definition of compactness.
A district is compact to the degree that the area of the district divided by the area of the smallest circle that encloses it, is close to the value 1. In other words, a district is compact to the degree that the ratio of the two areas is equal to, or approximately equal, to the value 1.
This is not a serious definition.” The definition does not tell us what it means to say that a ratio is “close to” or “approximately equal to” the value 1.
Here is an alternative definition.
A district, x, is more compact than another district, y, just in case the ratio of the area of x to the area of the smallest circle enclosing x is greater than the ratio of y to the area of the smallest circle enclosing y.
Does this definition entail that District 1 is compact and that District 2 is not? By construction, both districts are 100 square units in area. The circle on the left has an area of 156 units, while the circle on the right has an area of 503 units. In the left diagram, the ratio of the area of the district to the area of the circle is 0.641, so the district encloses 64.1% of the smallest circle that encloses it. In the right diagram, the ratio of the area of the district to the area of the circle is 0.199, so the area of the district equals 19.9% of the smallest circle that encloses it.
By the above definition, then, District 1 is, indeed, more compact than District 2. But, strictly speaking, the above definition is a definition of more compact; it is not a definition of “district x is compact.” A definition of is compact would have the form: “district x is compact just in case …” The definition just above tells us only whether one district is more, or less, compact than another. The definition specifies no single value, say k, such that a district is compact just in case the ratio of the area of the district, to the area of the smallest enclosing circle is greater than k. So, the above definition is not a definition of compactness.
There is something to the intuition that districts were fairly drawn only if they are compact. Of course, if a district were 1 mile wide and 100 miles long, we would want to know whether the location and boundaries of the district have dark origins. But some districts may be long, narrow and, therefore not compact according to the above definition but for innocent reasons. And it is hard to see how it would be practical to say in law that, for all districts, the ratio of the district area to the area of the smallest enclosing circle must be greater than k%.
Gerrymandering
President Trump asked the governor and state legislature of Texas to re-draw the map of its 38 districts specifically for the purpose of creating at least five new Republican-majority districts and eliminating five Democrat-majority voting districts. To draw district maps explicitly for the purpose of creating or destroying partisan advantage is to engage in one form of gerrymandering.²
Gerrymandering for partisan purposes—e.g., to make it more likely that a district or state will favor one party over another—is not a federal crime: In 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts may not strike down state district maps for partisan gerrymandering alone—though many states have made partisan gerrymandering a violation of state law.
When partisan gerrymandering entails racial gerrymandering—i.e. drawing district maps that have the effect of preventing racial or language minorities from gaining and keeping representation in Congress—then it is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if race is the predominant factor in drawing district lines and the plan lacks sufficient other justification (Shaw v. Reno 509 U.S. 630 1993). The Court has also ruled that some cases of partisan redistricting in a state does, indeed, constitute racial gerrymandering.³ The lesson here is that what appears at first to be merely partisan gerrymandering—and, therefore, legal—may also be a case of racial gerrymandering—and, therefore, not legal.
Partisan Gerrymandering is Unjust
While partisan gerrymandering is not a federal crime, it is hostile to fair representation in Congress—and, therefore, with justice. To see this, consider the (fictional) case of a state that has a population of 100 and 10 congressional districts. If these districts satisfy the requirement of equal population per district within the state, then each of the ten districts will have 10 citizens. Suppose as well that the state population consists of 64 individuals who vote for Democratic candidates, and 36 who vote for Republican candidates. In that case, the state as a whole qualifies as a strongly Democrat-majority state and, if the state’s congressional delegation were consistent with its partisan composition, we would expect the state to send 6 Democratic and 4 Republican representatives to Congress.
But suppose that the State has been gerrymandered: Imagine that the districts were gerrymandered as depicted in Diagram 2 below–each column of which represents a district consisting of 10 voters. Reading from left to right, the first six districts in the state have 6 Republican Party voters and 4 Democratic Party voters each. The remaining 4 districts have 10 Democratic Party voters each.
Assume that the congressional delegation of each district will be determined by its partisan composition. The first six districts have six Republican and four Democratic Party voters—so, we assume that these six districts would each send a Republican representative to Congress. In the remaining 4 districts all voters support Democratic Party candidates—so, we assume that these districts will send representatives from the Democratic Party to Congress. The congressional delegation, then, will consist of six Republican and four Democratic Party representatives–not the six Democrats and four Republicans that we might have expected.
Diagram 2: A Partisan (Republican) Gerrymander
In this scenario, a large majority of citizens in the state would have voted for congressional candidates from the Democratic Party, but partisan gerrymandering managed to concentrate Republicans into six of the ten districts, which led to a large Republican majority in the state’s congressional delegation. It is an ideal of democracy that, other things equal, policy will be consistent with the will of a majority of voters. Here, we see that gerrymandering is hostile to that ideal.
This fact about partisan gerrymandering has other consequences:
Partisan gerrymandering undermines the ideal of “one citizen, one vote.” In effect, partisan gerrymandering causes the votes of some voters in a sense to count for more than the votes of others. In the preceding example, fewer citizens vote for Republican Party policies than for Democratic Party policies—and, yet the Republicans win. In this sense, gerrymandering undermines political equality among voters, by undermining the idea that every citizen’s vote has the same weight in deciding what the government does.
Partisan gerrymandering is hostile to accountability. We have seen that partisan gerrymandering can lead a minority to gain power over a majority. For the same reason, gerrymandering will allow a minority to retain power, by making it hard or impossible for a majority to vote minority officeholders out.
Partisan gerrymandering discourages voters’ participation. Because partisan gerrymandering undermines political equality and political accountability, it is likely to discourage participation in voting. Such participation is the breath of democracy, and for this reason gerrymandering is the enemy of government by the governed.
Trump’s request that Texas and other red states gerrymander their electorates, therefore, is not merely an act of political self-interest: It is an attack on our democracy and its most fundamental ideals.
Why Should We Vote for Proposition 50?
It is unheard of for a President to call for a mid-decade redistricting. If we allow it to proceed only in the Republican states, the 2026 election will have one set of rules for the Democrats, and another for the Republicans. People often accuse Democrats of bringing a knife to a gun fight—in this mid-decade redistricting, Trump is attempting to disarm Democrats.
Proposition 50 would allow California to help level the political playing field. Its objective is to counteract and discourage partisan gerrymandering by other states and to cause the President and other Republicans to retreat from their present course of action.
Unlike the redistricting in the Republican states, redistricting under Proposition 50 would be temporary: Maps drawn under the authority of Proposition 50 would expire automatically in 2030, when the next decennial census would take place. California’s independent, non-partisan re-districting commission would re-draw districts in the state free of partisan gerrymandering. A vote for Proposition 50, therefore, is a vote to counteract partisan re-districting by other states at the (unprecedented) request of the President—and return the nation to the ideals of fair representative government, political equality, and justice.
Footnotes
¹ The Method of Equal Proportions more or less guarantees that this will be the case.
² In 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, signed into law a redistricting plan designed to favor his party in state elections. One district near Boston was drawn in such a bizarre, twisting shape that critics said it resembled a salamander. A political cartoon published in the Boston Gazette that same year depicted the district as a monster with claws, wings, and a long tail—and labeled it the “Gerry-mander.”
³ For example, on October 6th, 2026, Democracy Docket reported that the August 2025 redistricting in Texas, in fact aimed to eliminate at least some majority-minority districts, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause. The Plan is now under scrutiny by a federal court in El Paso.