Politics & Government
How Independent Redistricting Commissions Reduce Partisan Gerrymandering
Quick fact
Studies show that independent commissions reduce partisan gerrymandering: for example, congressional districts in commission states have significantly lower partisan bias and wasted-vote differentials than states where legislatures draw the maps.
Why this is interesting
Every ten years, the party in power in most states gets to draw its own election map. Why do some states now hand that power to a group of unelected citizens—and does it actually work?
Read the full explanation
Understanding How Independent Redistricting Commissions Reduce Partisan Gerrymandering
To understand how independent commissions work, first picture how redistricting normally happens. In most states, the state legislature—composed of elected representatives—draws the boundaries of legislative and congressional districts after each census. Because these politicians have a direct stake in their own re-election and their party's majority, they have a strong incentive to draw boundaries that maximize their party's advantage. This is partisan gerrymandering. Now imagine a different process: a state creates a commission of ordinary citizens (and sometimes judges or appointed members) who are not politicians and who are specifically barred from favoring any party. This commission holds public hearings, uses transparent criteria like keeping communities together and creating compact districts, and often requires supermajority votes to approve a map. By removing the people who benefit from manipulation from the drawing process, the conflict of interest vanishes. The result: maps that are drawn to represent voters, not to protect incumbents or party power.
A deeper explanation
The mechanism behind why independent commissions reduce gerrymandering is straightforward: they eliminate the self-serving incentive that drives partisan map-drawing. When legislators draw their own boundaries, each district's shape is optimized for electoral advantage. Computers allow precision cracking (dispersing opponent voters) and packing (concentrating opponent voters) with surgical accuracy. This is known as a conflict of interest. By contrast, independent commissions are structured to be neutral. Members often cannot have recently held political office, must be balanced across parties, and are selected through a process designed to prevent any single party from controlling the commission. Additionally, the commission's process is transparent: meetings are open, drafts are published, and the public can comment. This transparency and the requirement for bipartisan or supermajority approval mean that no map can be secretly gerrymandered for one party. Using neutral criteria—such as compactness, contiguity, respect for existing political subdivisions, and preserving communities of interest—further constrains the maps. While no system is perfect, and courts still must sometimes intervene, empirical evidence shows that states with independent commissions exhibit measurably lower partisan bias in their districts. Votes translate more fairly into seats, and more districts become genuinely competitive. This strengthens democratic legitimacy by ensuring that voters choose their representatives, rather than representatives choosing their voters.