I’ve made my opinion known about gerrymandering and the harm it does to voters, but things have become so blatant across the country that it’s time everyone takes a stand against it on both sides of the aisle.

It started last July, when President Donald Trump, fearing that he was going to lose the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections due to his growing unpopularity, demanded Texas redraw its electoral maps.

Redrawing maps typically only happens every 10 years after each U.S. census, so new maps weren’t due for another five years. With new census data, the government learns that some states have grown or reduced in population and some may gain seats or lose seats in the House of Representatives. Additionally, with new information about the electorate, fairer maps can be drawn by governing bodies.

But that has not been the case recently. Across the country, electoral maps are becoming more partisan, and Trump’s demand for mid-cycle redistricting was the final nail in the coffin that sent the country into a gerrymandering doomsday spiral.

Instead of growing a spine and telling Trump that you can’t just demand more votes by disenfranchising the electorate, the Texas state legislature dropped to its knees, bowed and did his bidding, creating maps that look like jig-saw puzzles to split up likely Democratic voters and spread them across red districts and create five new likely Republican districts.

Democrats weren’t going to take this sitting down, so the state of California responded, putting forth a ballot measure last November asking its voters if it was OK with the state redrawing its maps to take away Republican seats as long as Texas kept its gerrymandered seats. The measure passed overwhelmingly, which disenfranchised millions of Republican voters in our country’s most populous state.

But the gerrymandering didn’t stop just with Texas and California. Not to be outdone, Missouri redrew its maps in September by splitting Kansas City up into multiple rural districts. Our own state of Ohio was required to redraw its maps because our state legislature ignored the Ohio Supreme Court last election cycle and used its gerrymandered maps anyways. The new maps released in October were even more gerrymandered than the ones the previous Supreme Court had ruled against, but with Ohio now having a GOP supermajority in the Supreme Court, the judiciary no longer cares if voting districts are fair.

North Carolina also redrew its maps in October, likely adding one more red seat, and Florida followed suit in January, spreading its districts extremely thin in an attempt to erase almost all state representation from the Democratic Party.

Democrats in Virginia responded by asking voters to approve a gerrymandered map to counter all the Republican gerrymandering happening around the country. The measure passed by about 1% of the vote and it currently is in litigation after the state’s Supreme Court overthrew the decision.

But the biggest blow to fair maps nationwide took place April 30 when the U.S. Supreme Court overthrew key measures of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing states to racially gerrymander as long as they don’t say they’re specifically targeting race.

It should shock absolutely no one that the state of Tennessee immediately redrew its electoral maps, splitting the city of Memphis into multiple rural districts and eliminating the state’s only Democrat seat in Congress. Preventing situations like this in the 1960s Jim Crow south was literally the reason the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed in the first place.

Republicans in Alabama have already passed a law ignoring the results of its upcoming primaries next Tuesday if the federal court allows it to remove one of its majority Black districts so it can have one more Republican seat. Challenges are ongoing in Georgia and Louisiana as well.

This is a war that no one wins. Blue states become bluer. Red states become redder. Voters across the country are getting disenfranchised at an alarming rate.

With gerrymandering, the roles are reversed. Instead of voters choosing their politicians like the U.S. Constitution demands, politicians scheme behind the scenes to carve up their districts and choose their voters.

There is a solution, however, but we’re going to have to do it all together.

We need to demand our politicians support a ban on gerrymandering. This is a bipartisan issue and shouldn’t be difficult. Republicans hate it when Democrats do it. Democrats hate it when Republicans do it. Independents should hate it too. No politician should get your vote unless they publicly say they are in favor of legislation banning gerrymandering and supporting independent redistricting.

Until then, we’re in a race to the bottom and everyone loses.