On Tuesday, Nov. 4, California voters easily approved Proposition 50, a ballot measure that will redraw the state’s congressional maps starting in 2026 to give Democrats more seats in the House of Representatives. Under the redistricting, it’s likely that up to five current GOP-held seats could be flipped in next year’s midterm elections. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom (Democrat) proposed Prop 50 in response to Texas gerrymandering their congressional maps at President Donald Trump’s request. Their effort, done through the Republican-majority legislature, would most likely grant the Republican Party (GOP) a similar additional five seats in 2026.

The nationwide reaction has already begun. Indiana is the latest state to set a congressional special session to redistrict their maps, joining North Carolina and Florida on the Republican side and Illinois, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and New Hampshire as Democratic states considering similar proposals. Missouri and Ohio already redrew their maps in September and October, respectively, prospectively adding a total of three more Republican seats altogether.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), spearheaded by Attorney General Pam Bondi, is filing a lawsuit against California over Prop 50, alleging racially drawn congressional districts, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Whether the newly explicitly partisan DOJ is aware of the hypocrisy or simply doesn’t care, considering Prop 50 was voted on by California citizens –– as opposed to the GOP states redistricting directly from their legislature –– it is actually the most democratic of all recent gerrymandering measures. 

It’s due to this seeming transparency, along with voters feeling the need to fight Trump’s fire with fire (a sentiment Gov. Newsom has embraced wholeheartedly in recent months, looking to expand his national profile) and the supposed temporariness of the measure, that Prop 50 passed so easily. But that doesn’t make it a good idea in the long run.

Gerrymandering is a zero-sum game. What is gained by adding House seats to the majority party is lost in the decrease of competitive districts, exclusion of minority-party voters within both state and national politics and overall increased political polarization. Simply put, American republican democracy is undermined with gerrymandered districts and states. A state that voted 40% by population for the minority party, but has egregiously gerrymandered districts, is giving that 40% very little to no sway in their representatives’ legislative thought process and decision making process in Washington.

In the 1970s, Richard Fenno and David Mayhew pioneered research into congressional representatives’ time in their home districts and in D.C., respectively. They both established that congresspeople’s primary goal is to be re-elected above all, a doctrine that has since become political science law. Under this premise, gerrymandered districts push their representatives to ignore voters of the minority party. Prop 50 represents an acceleration of an already increasing trend: From 2010 to 2020, gerrymandering, combined with shifts in political geography, caused a 25% decrease in highly competitive house districts. 

As districts become more one-sided, representatives’ only challenge to their seat comes from the primary level, a system that rewards radicalism. Essentially, incumbents are incentivized to move toward the preferences of those who vote in their primary –– towards the left in safe Democratic districts and towards the right in safe Republican districts. Primary challengers also often position themselves as more extreme left or right than the incumbent in order to combat this incumbent advantage. It’s clear how this cycle contributes to the polarization and absence of bipartisan cooperation present in modern Congress.

Proponents of Prop 50 as necessary gerrymandering will argue that the process described above can be blamed entirely on the primary system, and they’re not entirely wrong. Primaries, both at the state and federal level, are in dire need of reform. But congressional gerrymandering only exacerbates these problems. The more it happens, the less competitive districts and the more extreme the two sides become. Not only are minority-party voters being discounted state-wide because they’ve been siphoned off into small components of each district, they’re being additionally discriminated against because representatives are being driven further in the majority-party direction due to the primary system.

Americans know how bad gerrymandering is: Polling shows that nearly 9 in 10 oppose it, a nearly unanimous consensus never found in politics these days. And what’s especially disappointing about Prop 50 is how much of a leader California was in districting maps prior to its enactment. Its maps were highly venerated by anti-gerrymandering advocates because the independent commission’s members come from both parties and are citizens rather than elected officials. 

Now, we’re in a race to the bottom. The aforementioned group of eight states that are considering redistricting are in addition to the two that have already enacted new maps, and of course, California and Texas are leading the way. And as for the promise that Prop 50 will hand over the maps back to the independent commission to draw in time for the 2032 election, there is serious reason to be skeptical. Will California Democrats really relinquish the power they worked so hard to get? Especially if all states with significant numbers of House seats gerrymandered in suit, the national Democratic party leadership would have zero incentive to not pressure California to simply reinstate Prop 50.

The Golden State’s left-leaning voters’ urge to fight fire with fire is not only understandable, it’s timely. Congressional Democrats, led by the uninspired Chuck Schumer in the Senate –– who is now facing calls for replacement by his own party –– and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, aren’t rising to the moment. This sentiment is only echoed after their recent caving to the GOP to end the government shutdown without securing the extension of Obamacare (ACA) subsidies that was their reason for the standoff in the first place. House representatives currently showing the most meaningful pushback to President Trump and his authoritarian, scandal-ridden and overwhelmingly unpopular first 300 days have recently been from his own party (see Rep. Thomas Massie’s (Republican-Kentucky) discharge petition to release the Epstein files).

However, California voters must also be wary of Gov. Newsom’s own interests in advancing Proposition 50. He is seizing the moment amidst a relatively empty Democratic national field for 2028 by combating President Trump at every step of the way. His newly formed X page, where he imitates the President’s rambling and incoherent Truth Social posts, is an example of his efforts to seek the national spotlight. But while social media posts represent a largely harmless, yet effective way to undermine Trump’s conduct by reminding Americans just how out of touch he is, Proposition 50 has real-world consequences that will last for generations to come.

Noah Balough may have forgotten to register to vote in time.