Recently, there has been considerable debate regarding an effort by the Texas Republican Party to redraw the state’s Congressional boundaries and convert five existing Congressional districts currently held by Democrats to districts that would favor a Republicans (an action historically referred to as gerrymandering).  What makes this effort all the more debatable is that it does not follow the historical redistricting pattern of redrawing Congressional district boundaries after the U.S. Census (which occurs at the end of each decade).

Related to this, on August 5^th, the CBS affiliate in Austin published the following:

President Donald Trump said Republicans are “entitled” to more congressional seats in Texas in a Tuesday morning interview on CNBC.

“I won Texas,” Trump said. “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas. And we are entitled to five more seats.”

Trump last year had the highest-ever number of votes in a presidential election in Texas, whose number of voters have grown along with its overall population. But Trump didn’t set a record for his margin of victory in Texas. 

Trump pushed Texas Republicans to pursue mid-decade congressional redistricting, including personally lobbying Gov. Greg Abbott on the issue. Texas’ pursuit of more GOP-friendly seats spurred state House Democrats to flee the state to block the Legislature from passing new maps. The redistricting effort has also kicked off a redistricting arms race between red and blue states around the country…

OK, so what do I think?  Well, I think that math should be used to answer this question.  Here are the key data points:

• Trump won 56.14% of the Texas vote in 2024
• The Texas state legislature is comprised of 150 seats with 88 being held by Republicans to 62 being held by Democrats. Republicans hold 58.66% of the seats in the state legislature.
• Texas has 38 seats in the House of Representatives with Republicans currently holding 25, Democrats holding 12 and one seat is vacant. Republicans currently hold 65.79% of the Texas seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• If the Congressional map in Texas was redrawn causing Republicans to win 5 additional seats that would mean that Republicans would hold 30 of Texas’ congressional seats, 78.94%.

Bottom line, I can find no justification based on historic voting patterns, Mr. Trump’s 2024 winning margin, or Republican representation in the Texas statehouse to justify that Republicans should hold 78.94% of the Texas seats in the U.S. House (assuming you truly want those seats to represent the will of the citizens of Texas).

This whole issue, however, goes way beyond Texas.  I am totally opposed to gerrymandering!  I actually live in a clearly gerrymandered Illinois district.  If you’re curious, Google the Illinois Congressional District Map and check out the map for the 13^th Congressional District.  Frankly, you’d be hard pressed to look up the map for any state’s Congressional Districts and not find gerrymandering produced by the political party that was in power at the time of redistricting (save for those states that use an independent redistricting commission or only have one representative).

The additional concern I have with the Texas Republicans plan is that it intends to redraw the map outside of the census.  Come on, we already get to see gerrymandered maps every ten years!  As stated by the Austin CBS affiliate, I am quite concerned that Texas will cause a “redistricting arms race” with numerous other states redrawing the maps whenever they want, in order to suit the party in power.  This could lead to manipulation that truly denies the will of the people on an ongoing basis.

However, the flaws in the structure of the U.S. Congress go beyond gerrymandering.  The U.S. Congress, comprised on the Senate and the House of Representatives, was created as a compromise adopted by our Founding Fathers to address the concerns of large / populus states versus small / less populus states.  The U.S. Senate was created to address small state concerns.  Each state, regardless of population, would have equal representation composed of two Senators.  In contrast, the House of Representatives was structures to address large state concerns.  The House was intended to be based on population, thereby allowing larger states more representatives.  Thus, achieving a balance of power between the Senate and the House.

The original House structure afforded one representative for roughly every 30,000 people.  However, by 1911 the size of the House had grown to 435 members.  The size was becoming unwieldy and there were concerns regarding the continued growth of the House with further growth in the population.  As such, The Apportionment Act of 1911 capped the size of the House at 435, while requiring that each state be allowed at least one representative.  Although this may have been necessary at the time, the change to the structure of the House of Representatives has diminished the Congressional balance that the Founders intended.   Currently there are seven states that have only one representative in the House:  Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.  The total combined population for these states is roughly 5,886,500 people, while the smallest state, Wyoming, has 587,600 citizens.  In contrast, California has a population of 39.43 million and has fifty-two U.S. Representatives.

The requirement that each state get one representative, with a national cap of 435 representatives, deters representation fully based on population and affords smaller states with some additional power not intended by the Founding Fathers.  For example, the current U.S. population is roughly 340 million.  If you said that Congressional districts were associated with a population of 500,000 citizens (with no cap) you would have a House composed of 680 members.  The smallest state, Wyoming, would still get 1 representative, but California (currently assigned 52 congressional districts) would have 78 districts.  In total, the seven smallest states would have roughly 10 representatives (versus the current 7) and the 7 largest states would have roughly 298 representatives (versus the current 193).

While I understand that increasing the size of the House of Representatives may be problematic, I believe that we need to eliminate the cap on the size of the House and re-establish the intent of the Founding Fathers.  In my opinion, all of the following actions need to be taken to ensure that the U.S. House of Representatives truly represents the people, the intent of the Founding Fathers, and the desire to have a balance of power between the two houses of Congress:

• Redistricting of U.S. House seats must only occur once every ten years, after the U.S. Census is completed and prior to subsequent Congressional elections.
• Eliminate the cap on the size of the House of Representatives.
• The size of the House of Representatives should be based on the population of the smallest state recorded by the census. This would set the threshold for the minimum number of citizens represented by a member of the House.  If we use the current census data the number would be 587,600 (based on Wyoming).
• To determine the number of representatives each state gets, you divide the state’s population (from the census) by the smallest state’s population (587,600). As such, California would get 67 seats.  Fractions, would be rounded to the closest whole number.
• The U.S. Census and redistricting would be performed by independent, nonpartisan commissions to eliminate gerrymandering.

Now, some might accuse me of being biased toward the Democrats, because I keep using California for my example of a large state.  Be advised that Texas is the second largest state, with a population of 39,431,000, and Florida is third, with a population of 23,372,000.   Currently, Texas and Florida have 64 Congressional districts.  Under my proposal their Congressional districts would grow to 107.

That’s my 2 cents…