With mid-decade re-redistricting on the horizon in Ohio and Texas, I wanted to re-up this Slate column I wrote with Aaron Goldzimer a few years back. Over the last two elections, the U.S. House has been exceptionally fair, in aggregate. As Eric McGhee, Chris Warshaw, and I recently documented, the House’s overall efficiency gap was close to zero in both the 2022 and 2024 elections. But new Republican gerrymanders in Ohio and Texas would substantially skew House representation. They would push the House from near-perfect partisan fairness to a considerable pro-Republican tilt.

In our 2022 column, Goldzimer and I outlined a strategy that willing states could use to offset these sorts of maneuvers: redistricting for national partisan fairness. The basic idea is that states would add a new line-drawing criterion: aiming through their congressional maps to achieve, to the extent possible, an unbiased U.S. House in aggregate. Here’s some of the key discussion from our column:

If existing state reforms are counterproductive, and if the federal government has consigned itself to the sidelines, how can a House that accurately reflects the will of the people be achieved? One promising idea is for blue states to require their congressional maps to promote national partisan fairness to the extent possible. There exist several statistical measures of maps’ partisan fairness. These metrics could be applied to the House as a whole rather than to any individual map. Blue states could then design their districts with the aim of minimizing the bias of the House in its entirety.

In practice, this would mean one of three things. If the House as a whole is reasonably balanced, blue states would draw fair maps. If the House is skewed in Democrats’ favor (as it was in the 1970s and 1980s), blue states would craft pro-Republican maps. And if the House has a pro-Republican tilt (as over the last decade), blue states would redistrict to benefit Democrats.

This proposal raises a tricky issue of timing. When blue states design their districts, it might not yet be clear in which direction (if any) the entire House will be biased. One solution is for blue states to wait as long as possible before finalizing their maps. At present, for example, nearly every state is done with congressional redistricting, so the cake is almost baked. Another option is for blue states to endorse three maps: one that’s fair, another that’s pro-Republican, and one more that’s pro-Democratic. The skew of the whole House, when it’s finally known, would then determine which map goes into effect. . . .

This idea is potent enough that if just a few more blue states were persuaded, an unbiased House would actually be attained. Notably, California, Colorado, and Washington are all blue states whose independent commissions are barred from considering partisanship. If instead those commissions were instructed to pursue national partisan fairness—for instance, through voter initiatives taking effect later this decade—the commissions are responsible for enough districts that a fair House would, in fact, be the result.

After we wrote our piece, Goldzimer and James Piltch put together a longer academic version of this proposal. See here for their article, “Recovering from Rucho: How States Can Create National Partisan Fairness.” Interestingly, Gavin Newsom suggested just yesterday that California may try to redraw its congressional map if Texas goes down the road of mid-decade re-redistricting. Legally, this would likely require a constitutional amendment. In policy terms, though, the move would be perfectly defensible as an effort to maintain national partisan fairness.