Virginia voters have begun casting ballots on a redistricting referendum that would give Democrats a decisive advantage going into this year’s midterms. If passed next month, the measure will mark the latest shot in a gerrymandering war that opened with Texas’ mid-decade redistricting last year.
The referendum would amend the Virginia Constitution in order to allow the Democratic-led General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional districts. In theory, this would give Democrats a 10-to-1 advantage in the elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. While it’s far from certain to pass, the redistricting bill—and its endorsement by new Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger—signals a deeper problem.
The Virginia effort, which came in response to Texas’ passage of a map last year intended to give the state five more Republican House seats, should concern voters nationwide. Attempts to selectively redraw congressional districts to benefit one party or the other affect all Americans’ right to representation—a right not just to select a representative who is familiar with their circumstances, but also to run for Congress in a balanced system that values the voices of all voters.
Gerrymandering is essentially a fight for political power. When parties vie for control of Congress, they often do so in the people’s name. But what if instead of treating democracy like a zero-sum game, they shared it? Uncapping the number of seats in the House and expanding representation would boost the accountability and accessibility of lawmakers, shifting the focus from who wins to greater self-governance.
Congress today is our most unpopular branch of government, with an approval rating of 16 percent. And gerrymandering fosters even more distrust between lawmakers and their constituents.
More direct representation is particularly important amid the latest nationwide redistricting efforts. If you look at the proposed new map for Virginia, you’ll notice that many districts start in the northeast and then stretch across the entire state, westward and down toward Richmond. By splitting the Democratic strongholds of Northern Virginia and Richmond, the new map distorts representation to serve a political party and not the people. This clear attempt to dilute the voting power of more rural areas is not how our representative government is supposed to work.
Our founders’ view of representation included a geographic element. They understood that different areas would create different opportunities and that, as a result, people would divide into different groups with different interests. As James Madison, a Virginian himself, wrote in Federalist 10:
The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
In Virginia, most people and wealth are concentrated in the densely populated north, giving the high-income satellite communities of Washington, D.C., a significant electoral advantage over the more rural areas they’re lumped in with under the redistricting effort. In the new map’s 7th Congressional District, for example, it would take roughly two and a half hours (and possibly more with traffic) to get from the northeastern reach of the district to its southwestern boundary. The result is a system seemingly designed to disenfranchise voters and potential congressional candidates from the district’s poorer, more sparsely populated communities.
Consider Elkton. The town of 3,000 in western Virginia has a median household income of about $62,000 per year and an average home value of $246,000. Under Virginia’s new congressional map, it would share a district with the 44,000-person Northern Virginia community of Burke, which has a median household income of about $185,000 and an average home value of $747,000.
If a citizen of Elkton were frustrated with the policies of a representative from the eastern part of the district, they would have little to no shot of running for office and winning. They’d have to travel two hours to reach the areas where most voters live, and when they got there, they wouldn’t know much about them because their interests differ depending on property distributions. Therefore, representation, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, is going to come from that highly prosperous northeast of Virginia. The southwest would be unrepresented without the means to contest.
Given its small population, securing Elkton’s voting power may not strike many people as a national priority. But this same process happens little by little across the country, because district sizes are simply too large to accommodate America’s growing and diverse population. Gerrymandering, an intentional effort by lawmakers to strip their citizens of their electoral rights to gain a political edge, compounds these problems. As Yuval Levin recently said on the YouTube broadcast Representation Station: “If all you care about is the party affiliation of the resulting member of Congress, then you’ve really lost sight of the purpose of representation.”
This is what happens when political parties play a tit-for-tat game for power in Congress. The purpose of representation is threefold. 1) Communication: A representative is responsible for informing their district and listening to its citizens’ concerns. 2) Power: A representative then goes to Washington to write legislation that affects not just their district but the whole country. 3) Responsibility: The power vested in lawmakers should be wielded with care, following the rules established in the Constitution.
Representation was at the center of our founding. During the Constitutional Convention, the first question pertaining to this issue was how political power would be divided between large and small states. The Great Compromise of 1787 divided Congress into two: States would have equal representation in the Senate with two seats each, and the House would be apportioned by population. But what should the ratio be between the population and representatives?
It was on this issue of representation that George Washington, the convention’s presiding officer, had his only significant intervention. The future president supported the motion changing the ratio of representatives to constituents from 1-to-40,000 to 1-to-30,000, arguing that the House needed to be large enough to foster real accountability among lawmakers. The convention ultimately settled on a ratio of 1-to-30,000.
The founders tackled another key question: Who has the right to become a representative in the first place? The answer, according to Madison in Federalist 57, is everyone. “Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States.”
However, after more than a century of expanding the size of the House to keep pace with population growth, Congress passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which capped the number of seats at 435. As the population has continued to grow, so have the district sizes, and as the district sizes have grown, so has the distribution of property. This trend widens the gap between citizens and their representatives.
The U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776 in the name of representation, but compare its voting power with that of the United Kingdom today. The House of Commons has 650 members—215 more than the House—and a smaller population of just 67 million. The resulting representation ratio is 1-to-110,000, compared to the U.S. ratio of 1-to-760,000, giving the average British citizen seven times more representation than the average American citizen.
Since the capping of the House, our representation has grown distant, access has been denied, and accountability has weakened, resulting in Americans feeling disconnected and powerless in their government. Congress today is our most unpopular branch of government, with an approval rating of 16 percent. And gerrymandering fosters even more distrust between lawmakers and their constituents.
It’s difficult to fully prevent continued efforts at political redistricting in some form or another. But by expanding the House and shrinking its districts, we make it more difficult. Larger districts allow dense cities to overshadow rural communities, increasing distortion. Smaller districts force local coherence. Compact districts will lower election costs, increasing competition. And most importantly, they would make it more likely that all voters are properly represented and therefore able to hold their representatives accountable.
What should the number of seats be? Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois recently proposed legislation that would expand the House by approximately 230 members. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recommends increasing the number by 150. Ultimately, the number should be determined on a ratio, so it continues to grow alongside the population. And that ratio should be discussed by all of us, not just the politicians. Should it be 1-to-110,000 like the U.K.? How about 1-to-400,000? Self-government requires engagement among its citizens. If people want power, if they want a voice, if they want more representation, they are going to have to speak up for it.
Removing the fight for political power from government would be like “annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” Instead, we need to allow a controlled burn, creating an opportunity for new growth. If you live in Virginia and are a Democrat, you may not mind a 10-to-1 advantage for your team, but what happens when the other team gets the ball? Those concerned about your right to representation should call their representatives and ask them to uncap the House.
