Tit-for-Tat Gerrymandering Hurts Everyone, But What's the Alternative?

The other day, Virginians narrowly passed a referendum approving a new congressional map. This is is another battle in what has become a mid-cycle gerrymandering war started by Texas in August 2025. And make NO mistake, the Republicans started this mess.

After taking office, and recognizing how unpopular his gutting of the government, sending ICE into cities to terrorize its citizens, mass deportations, and everything else he did was, Trump realized quickly that the 2026 midterms would likely not go well for him. But instead of seeing this and moderating his policies to not cause such an uproar, he and the GOP decided to play dirty and try to steal any advantage they could muster. One of their big pushes was to start creating new congressional maps for the U.S. House of Representatives in different GOP-led states, most notably, but not limited to Texas.

Congressional maps are normally drawn at the beginning of each decade after the census results. It is rare for maps to be redrawn halfway through a decade. Congressional maps in many states are already heavily gerrymandered to favor the party in power, Texas being no exception. (As an aside if you're looking for a good book on the topic, read Ratf**ked by David Daley) Texas, because, apparently everything has to be bigger there, went to an even larger extreme with their gerrymandering to try to eliminate 5 Democratic seats.

Missouri, North Carolina, California, Florida, Ohio, and now Virginia have all joined in on the tit-for-tat redistricting that is now going around. Other states have tried as well. Indiana tried, but failed leading Trump supporters to SWAT GOP representatives who didn't go along with Trump's moves (SWATTING is the act of sending heavily armed police forces to someone under the guise of a serious violent act taking place that is not actually occurring. People have died due to these incidents).

I want to be clear. Gerrymandering is not a good thing. When congressional maps are gerrymandered, you now have our representatives choosing their voters rather than the voters choosing their representatives. It's bad when the GOP does it, it's bad when the Democrats do it. It's a problem no matter who's doing it. The gerrymandered maps allow representatives to remain in "safe" districts where it's unlikely a member of the opposite party would have enough voters to kick him or her out. Essentially the only worry they have is being primaried.

But what else should the Democratic Party do to combat the rigging of the electoral maps? I fully understand those who don't like the Democrats joining in the rigging. I'm not a fan of it either, but I'm not sure of an alternative. Doing nothing and acting like all of this is normal would be like bringing a knife to a gunfight...good luck.

It's disheartening, as is just about everything going on in politics nowadays, but we are where we are. If we have any hope of even beginning to claw back our democracy, we have to regain the levers that help control it. And if that means fighting back with gerrymandering to balance the GOP's gerrymandering, I'll hold my nose and support it.