Hoosiers protest potential mid-cycle redistricting outside the Indiana Statehouse on Tuesday, August 26, 2025. (Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
The stakes of the current redistricting debate threaten the health of our representative democracy. This is not hyperbole. Most elementary definitions of democracy indicate that free and fair elections are a prerequisite for government responsiveness. Voters get to choose their elected officials. It should not work the other way around.
National Republicans have targeted Indiana among other states where they see an opportunity to exploit. All seven members of Indiana’s Republican congressional delegation support further eroding democracy in Indiana. Vice President J.D. Vance visited Indianapolis last month before Republican members of the General Assembly visited the White House for an arm-twisting session to engage in an unusual round of redistricting and explicit partisan gerrymander in advance of the 2026 cycle to preserve the Republican’s narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
I’d like to take the educational opportunity to correct how most people pronounce the word gerrymandering. I’m mindful this is appearing in print online, but I am confident that when people are reading it – they are saying it “jerrymandering” with a soft g. While political science professors like myself sometimes correct people whenever we get the chance, figures as diverse as stand-up comic John Mulaney to the U.S. Supreme Court have shared that it should be pronounced with a hard G (as in “Gary”).
The term gerrymandering is named after former Vice President and then Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry. While he was Governor, districts were redrawn to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. One of the oddly shaped districts resembled a salamander, and the term gerrymander (combining Gerry and salamander) was born. Setting this light-hearted history lesson aside, this blatant naked partisan power grab is extremely problematic and another step to further eroding the quality of democracy in the United States.
Gerrymandering in Indiana?
While some early opposition emerged that gave opponents of mid-decade redistricting hope, robocalls and political pressure, in addition the Washington, DC visit, are being utilized to move more Republicans to support this. It seems to be working as one early opponent said “I’m not opposed to it as I was.”
Indiana’s State Legislature already engaged in gerrymandering after the 2020 Census, in part to redraw the 5th Congressional District to make it less competitive. At the time, George Washington University political science professor Christopher Warshaw identified that the maps had “historically extreme levels of partisan bias.” Now, in an effort to potentially pick up an additional seat, they may consider targeting Democratic Representatives Frank Mrvan or Andre Carson.
To meet the principle of “one person, one vote,” the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are reapportioned across the fifty states (or reallocated based on changes in state population) after every U.S. Census. Once reapportionment occurs, it is up to each state to redraw their congressional and state legislative districts. The process varies by state as some states allow the elected state legislatures guide the process, like Indiana, whereas other states utilize independent and non-partisan commissions.
States where partisan state legislatures control the process are more likely to engage in partisan gerrymanders. That “both sides” do it is problematic. In response to the Republican power grab in Texas (and potential targets like Indiana, Missouri, and other states), Democrats are proposing that they, too, would consider redistricting in states where they control state government like California and New York.
But choosing to fight “fire with fire” is dangerous as the problem with democratic backsliding is that it hard to stop. If Democrats in blue states do not return in kind, they are likely to stay in the political minority. If they do engage in this sort of redistricting, they are complicit and further erode trust in our political institutions. This is also problematic when representative forms of government engaged in anti-democratic behavior.
Who can we turn to?
The Courts? Not likely with the current composition. In a narrow 5-4 victory along ideological lines, Chief Justice wrote the majority opinion in the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause. The Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that stopped a partisan gerrymander in North Carolina. Roberts did so on a technicality by sidestepping the question of the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders by calling it a “political question” to be decided by the elected bodies of government.
The Politicians? In general, elected officials are loathe to limit their own power. States that have been successful in implementing nonpartisan, independent commissions to handle redistricting rather than their partisan state legislature have largely utilized the ballot initiative. In Indiana, our elected officials do not trust us with that authority.
That may leave it to voters, who overwhelmingly oppose mid-decade redistricting, to apply pressure now and to utilize the ballot box next November. However, if legislators are choosing their constituents rather than the other way around, the choice is being taken away from the voters.
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