This year’s fight for the House came down to four gerrymandered districts. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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Takeaways from a Tight Battle for the House

Republicans emerged from a hard-fought battle for the House with only a slightly reduced majority.

But a new Brennan Center analysis

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says that doesn’t mean the election was merely a reaffirmation of the status quo. Instead, the 2024 races offer a number of important lessons and insights into the importance of redistricting reforms in ensuring competition and fair outcomes and, conversely, the power of gerrymandering to do the opposite.

Indeed, this year’s fight for the House came down, in dramatic fashion, to four gerrymandered districts

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in North Carolina and Georgia — all redrawn since the 2022 midterms. Thanks to the gerrymanders, Republicans flipped all four previously Democratic districts on their way to winning a 220–215 seat majority (before any vacancies). Absent the gerrymanders, Democrats likely would have a 219–216 seat majority.

At the same time, the analysis finds that Democrats can thank fair maps, drawn mostly by commissions and courts, for keeping the House close. Of the 19 districts that flipped in 2024, nearly three-quarters were in states that used fairer mapping processes, such as independent, citizen-led commissions.

Read the full analysis here

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.



Ohio Voters Reject Independent Commission



On Election Day, voters in Ohio rejected a ballot initiative that would have created a citizen-led independent commission to draw congressional and legislative districts. Had the measure passed, Ohio would have joined four other states that have strong independent commissions, with new ungerrymandered maps created in time for the 2026 midterms.

Though polling

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showed approximately 57 percent of likely Ohio voters were in favor of the initiative’s anti-gerrymandering reforms, the measure ultimately received only 46 percent of the vote. Many voters said they were confused

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by misleading ballot language crafted by Republican officials, which asserted that the measure would “require gerrymandering” rather than end it. Reform advocates objected

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to the inaccurate language in court, but the Ohio Supreme Court (dominated by Republican justices) allowed

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it to go forward in a controversial party-line vote.

Redistricting reform advocate and former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, said of the outcome

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, “In analyzing the vote tonight, it is clear that the millions of Ohioans who voted yes want to end gerrymandering. And it is also clear that those who voted no thought that they were voting to end gerrymandering.”

Despite the loss, O’Connor promised this would not be the end of redistricting reform efforts and that Ohioans would continue to advocate “for an Ohio where every vote truly counts and where transparency and fairness guide our electoral process.”



Featured Map — South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District

South Carolina’s redrawn 1st Congressional District is back in court, this time in a new case

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filed before the South Carolina Supreme Court that contends the district is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander under state law.

The new case follows a decision

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earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting claims by Black voters that the redrawn 1st District was a racial gerrymander under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, the justices accepted arguments by lawmakers that they had radically redrawn the district’s boundaries merely to create a partisan advantage for GOP incumbent Nancy Mace, something permitted under federal law.

The new case in state court takes lawmakers at their word but argues that, even if partisan gerrymandering doesn’t run afoul of the U.S. Constitution, it nonetheless violates various provisions of the South Carolina Constitution, including its guarantees of “free and open” elections and an “equal right to elect officers.”

At the heart of the dispute is lawmakers’ surgical removal and transfer of heavily Black — and Democratic — parts of Charleston from District 1 to District 6. This made District 1 safely Republican but left Black voters in coastal Charleston, the heart of the state’s Lowcountry, in the same congressional district as Columbia, the state’s capitol capital and second largest city, over 115 miles away.



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Redistricting in the News

In Los Angeles

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, voters approved major reforms to the redistricting process by voting to establish independent redistricting commissions to draw districts for the city council and the city’s unified public school district. Currently, districts are drawn by appointees selected by elected officials. The first commission members will be chosen between 2028 and 2029, ahead of the 2030 census, through an application process managed by the city clerk. Half the commission will be selected randomly through a lottery of qualified applicants, while the other half will be chosen with consideration for diversity in age, race, income, and other factors. Any resident aged 18 or older who has lived in LA for at least five years, regardless of citizenship or voter registration status, is eligible to serve on the commission.



Undoing the gerrymandering of Wisconsin’s legislative maps — rated among the most extreme in the country — has dramatically reshaped the state’s political landscape. With new voting maps that redrew GOP-gerrymandered districts thrown out by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, Democrats gained

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14 assembly and senate seats in the November 5 election. Senate Republicans lost 4 seats, ending their supermajority. Democratic State Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein said the election results demonstrate that “when people have a real choice at the ballot box, that they’re going to choose the person that best represents their values and the policies they want to see going forward.”



In Alabama and Louisiana, the creation of new Black-opportunity districts led to the election of two new Black representatives in November. In Alabama, Shomari Figures won the 2nd Congressional District, flipping it from Republican to Democrat. Figures will be the fourth Black member elected to Congress from Alabama since the Reconstruction, and for the first time, Alabama will have two Black members of Congress serving at the same time.



In Louisiana, Cleo Fields won the redrawn 6th Congressional District, flipping the seat from Republican to Democratic. Fields will be returning to the House 30 years after he was elected as a representative in 1992 and served two terms before his district was struck down as a racial gerrymander. The 119th Congress will set a record

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for the largest number of Black federal lawmakers in history.



Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) has filed a resolution

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that, if passed, would create a bipartisan House task force

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to explore reforms to the current first-past-the-post electoral system used to elect members of Congress. The task force would be equally comprised of Democratic and Republican members and would spend a year conducting public hearings and collecting witness testimony before issuing a final report. Among the reforms the resolution proposes examining are using multimember districts for House elections, adopting alternative methods of elections such as ranked-choice voting, and using independent commissions to draw congressional district boundaries.



Two electoral reform groups, Fix Our House and Protect Democracy, released a letter

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signed by 175 political scientists in support of the task force. Fix Our House cofounder Lee Drutman noted, “What’s different in this moment is just a sense of, with each passing election, just how broken our political system feels to so many people.”



In Alabama, a federal district court held trial

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in early November in a case contending that the state senate map violates the Voting Rights Act. Although the plaintiffs initially challenged multiple state house and state senate districts, they dropped challenges to all but two senate districts in December 2023, leaving only challenges to districts in the Huntsville region, for unnecessarily “cracking” Black voters, and in the area around Montgomery, for unnecessarily “packing” Black voters. A ruling is expected early next year.









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