thomas leverett weblog: August 2026

Monday, August 03, 2026

Gerrymandering's victim: democracy

This post addresses a problem I can't blame directly on you-know-who. It's just a problem of the recent days, and it requires our collective effort to solve it, but we're not doing collective anything because we're so divided.

To put bluntly, gerrymandering has removed the voice from the minority in every state. These days Iowa is all red, Kansas is all red, Illinois is all blue, and New Mexico is all blue. These are states I'm most familiar with but it's happening in every state. As computers make gerrymandering more possible, and more efficient, whoever is the majority in each state's legislature is pressured to make all the districts one color as a national power move for either red or blue. Spider-shape districts appear as people are divided up accordingly, rather than by proximity. So for example Des Moines gets carved up and assimilated into Iowa's red districts and Iowa has all red districts, and the dems of Des Moines lose their voice. All liberals in Iowa lose their voice.

But similarly, all farmers in Illinois, who are usually red, lose their voice as farm country gets carved up and assimilated into blue districts. i live in farm country; it would ordinarily be red. We would have a few red farm-country representatives and then a lot of blue urban representatives and Illinois' delegation would look like Illinois, mostly blue but with a few reds. Now it's all blue. The farmers have lost their voice altogether. So have the red ranchers of New Mexico. It used to be considered at least fair to let New Mexico have at least one red district since it was more than a third red. But no, now its districts are all blue.

How did this happen? Ultra divisive, competetive politics. Dems like to say the Reps started it, and that's true, they did. The dems did it too, they had no choice, that's true. But it's all legal. Of all the illegal stuff T has done, this has at least been legal. When we made the constitution we didn't reckon with computer programs that could divide a state so that its districts would be all one color. But computers can do that and do it well.

Democracy has to adjust to the computer age. First we have to decide whether Iowa and Kansas liberals, or Illinois farmers and New Mexico ranchers, are worthy of representation if they are a minority, even if they are a substantial minority. That's what we've lost - substantial minorities no longer have a voice in Congress. And they won't until we change the law somehow.

But how to change the law? One way would be to change the way a state chooses its US representatives. Iowa has four, in regions now, through gerrymandering divided so that Des Moines liberals no voice. We want the minorities like Illinois farmers and New Mexico ranchers to have a voice, so we do this with every state. You run a statewide election with all candidates, and make the top four winners have the four seats. So all represent the whole state, not just the carved-up snake-like district that makes no geographical sense, has no geographical cohesion. All would represent all of Iowa. Voters could choose more than one but if the top four made it, the substantial minorities would get one somehow. The nature of politics would change. I'm not sure if there would be more consequences, especially in the bigger states like California or Illinois. In Illinois would the top vote-getters all be Chicagoans? We country folk may all lose our voices altogether if so. More likely, the average voter would simply be unable to distinguish between what, forty or fifty candidates.

So, I'm not sure about my solution here. It's just an idea. If our goal is to give substantial minorities a voice we can surely collectively come up with something that will work. We have to do something, though, quick. Democracy is dying and there are some pretty desperate people flailing around, trying to stay afloat, who don't care who drowns in the process.