Is gerrymandering ethical?

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1. John Hooker says:

   April 25, 2026 at 9:49 pm

   A full discussion of gerrymandering would get us into issues of political philosophy that go beyond the scope of this blog.  But the tools provided here can provide some insight into the ethics of the practice.

   We must first understand what gerrymandering is and what it can do.  The term historically refers to distorted salamander-like districts that give one party additional seats in the legislature.  The essence of gerrymandering, however, is not the shape of districts, but its failure to provide proportional representation.  For example, it may allow a minority party to have a majority of the seats in the legislature.   Gerrymandered districts can look quite reasonable, and weird-looking districts may not be gerrymandered at all. 

   Gerrymandering is more powerful than is widely appreciated.  It can allow a party that represents only a quarter of the population to have a majority in the legislature.  It can allow a party that represents 51% of the population to control all the seats in the legislature.*

   Gerrymandering accomplishes its aims by “packing and cracking.”  The opposite party is packed into a few districts, and one’s own party is split over many districts, while ensuring at least a slim majority in each.  Gerrymandering therefore carries a risk for the party that does it:  more districts become competitive.  If voters shift somewhat toward the other party, the cracked districts may swing to that party, and the gerrymandering party may be worse off than before.   Politicians seem to be catching on to this as the electorate moves somewhat to the left.

   The issue before us, though, is whether gerrymandering is ethical, risky or not.  The most obvious ethical problem is its breach of an implied promise.  Representative democracy means nothing unless there is proportional representation; otherwise, a small minority can control the state, which is scarcely democratic.  The government therefore makes an implicit promise to voters: a one-person-one-vote principle will be observed, at least approximately.  Breaking this promise is unethical because it is ungeneralizable. 

   This is reflected in the fact that U.S. law takes the one-person-one-vote principle seriously.  The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that districts must have roughly equal population, to ensure proportional representation (Wesberry v Sanders).  Inexplicably, however, the Court seems to forget this principle when it comes to partisan gerrymandering, which is just as effective at violating proportionality.  Perhaps the justices don’t understand its power.

   Gerrymandering can also be disutilitarian, because it may trigger a gerrymandering war that undermines trust in democracy and all the ills that entails.  This is hardly speculative, as we are watching it happen now.

   This brings me to the harder question, which can arise in a Federal election.  Is it ethical to respond in kind to gerrymandering by the opposite party in another state?  Obviously, if there is no response, then there can be no gerrymandering war.  So, a response could be as potentially disutilitarian as the initial gerrymander, even if we grant that it is generalizable.  However, a failure to respond could be equally disutilitarian when the legislative majority is at stake, because it effectively disenfranchises half the electorate.  These voters may see retaliation as the only way to secure their rightful majority in the national legislature.  This argues that a response to gerrymandering passes the utilitarian test when the legislature is almost evenly divided, as the House of Representatives is today.

   As for the generalizability argument against gerrymandering, it breaks down when applied to retaliation, at least in the current situation.  A response to gerrymandering in another state actually restores proportional representation.  Voters are proportionately represented in the sense that their views are proportionately represented in the legislature.  The government’s implied promise of proportionality is therefore honored, at least when it comes to major issues.

   In fact, one might claim that a failure to respond is ungeneralizable.  For if political parties always failed to respond, then the initial gerrymanderers (e.g., Texas Republicans) would know that they could do it without retaliation.  They would feel free to gerrymander with abandon, which would eventually bring down the system they wish to dominate.  This may have, in fact, been the situation with the Texas gerrymander, since Democrats had a reputation of giving tepid responses to aggressive challenges, and the political world seemed surprised when California Democrats actually retaliated with Proposition 50. 

   One can dispute these points, but in any event it is hard to make a  convincing case that responding to a gerrymander is either disutilitarian or ungeneralizable when the legislative majority hangs in the balance, and it could even be obligatory. 

   *For the mathematics of all this, see my article on gerrymandering.

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