Who Gets to Draw the Map: America’s Gerrymandering Problem and What It Means for Texas Voters

Gerrymandering has been all over the news lately. But have you ever wondered where that odd word came from — or what it means for your vote? The story behind it stretches back more than 200 years, and some of its most important chapters have been written right here in Texas.

In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a new map dividing his state into voting districts. One of those districts was so twisted and oddly shaped that a Boston newspaper said it looked like a salamander. The newspaper combined the governor’s name with the word salamander and coined the term “Gerrymander.” The name has stuck for more than two centuries — and so has the practice.

To understand gerrymandering, it helps to understand what the Constitution says — and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t say. Article I requires that congressional seats be divided among the states based on population, counted every ten years by the U.S. Census. But the founders left the details of how to draw individual district lines largely up to the states. Article I, Section 4 simply says that states control the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding congressional elections, with Congress able to step in by law. That vagueness has created centuries of mischief.

What it means is that every ten years, after the Census, state legislatures redraw the boundaries of their voting districts. Whoever controls that process can draw the lines to help their side win. There are two main techniques.

The first is called packing — cramming as many of the opposing party’s voters as possible into a single district. They win that seat by a large margin, but those extra votes are wasted on a victory they already had.

The second is called cracking — splitting a neighborhood or community that tends to vote one way into several districts, so that group never has enough votes to win in any of them.

Used together, these techniques allow a party to win far more seats than its share of votes would suggest. In effect, politicians end up choosing their voters — rather than voters choosing their politicians. Both parties have practiced this. Democrats relied on it to hold power across the South for much of the twentieth century. Republicans refined it on a national scale after their 2010 elections, when they won control of statehouses nationwide just in time to draw new maps.

Texas has been one of the most significant battlegrounds in this struggle. After Republicans took control of the Texas Legislature in 2002, they took the unusual step of redrawing the state’s congressional map midway through the decade — without waiting for the next Census. Congressman Tom DeLay led the effort. Texas Democrats were so opposed that they fled the state — first to Oklahoma, then to New Mexico — attempting to deny the Republican majority a quorum needed to vote. The effort failed. The new maps helped Republicans gain several congressional seats.

The courts have been involved in Texas redistricting ever since. Because the state’s growth between 2010 and 2020 was driven largely by Hispanic, Black, and Asian residents — non-Hispanic white residents accounted for less than 5% of that growth — judges have repeatedly found that the maps were drawn to reduce the voting power of minority communities, violating the Voting Rights Act. In 2025, history repeated itself: Texas passed another mid-decade remap, urged on by President Trump, and Democrats once again left the state in protest. A federal court blocked the new maps as an illegal racial gerrymander, but the Supreme Court stepped in to allow them to remain in effect for the 2026 elections.

The courts’ role in all of this is complicated. While judges can intervene when maps cross into racial discrimination — as repeatedly happened in Texas — they have shown far less willingness to strike down maps drawn purely for partisan advantage. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no authority to do so. Some states have addressed the issue by creating independent, nonpartisan commissions to draw district lines instead of leaving it to legislators.

Texas has not taken that step.

What is ultimately at stake is something the Constitution places at the very center of our system of government: the idea that the people choose their representatives, not the other way around. When district lines are drawn to lock in one party’s victory before a single vote is cast, that idea is turned on its head. In a state as large and fast-growing as Texas — one whose population will only become more diverse — who draws those lines and how will shape who holds power for decades to come.

The salamander Elbridge Gerry drew in 1812 has never really gone away. It just keeps changing shape — and every few years, it shows up again in Texas.