The Decision That Could Doom Democrats for a Decade

Democrats wanted to play fair, and they tried to lead by example. In the decade-long battle over who gets to draw the districts that determine control of Congress, the party even relinquished some of its power in the name of good government. Now Democrats are discovering the potential cost of that attempt at high-mindedness: their House majority and, perhaps, the presidency.

To rid the country of partisan gerrymandering, Democrats for years joined with election reformers to take the responsibility for redistricting away from politicians and hand it to independent, nonpartisan commissions. The effort did not begin as an entirely altruistic project; both parties gerrymandered where they could, but Democrats had more to gain by scrapping the practice. They won the argument in a number of places: Voters in states including California, Colorado, Arizona, Michigan, and Virginia have approved redistricting commissions over the past 15 years, protecting more than one in five congressional seats from the threat of extreme gerrymandering.

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