How to End the Gerrymandering Doom Loop Forever - The Ezra Klein Show

We have entered a world of maximum gerrymandering warfare. Any guardrails that once existed, from the Constitution or the courts, have been bulldozed over the last decade – most recently in the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder for minorities to challenge racially discriminatory voting maps.

Red and blue states alike have been aggressively trying to redraw their congressional maps in response to all these developments. And there is no sign that will end in 2028; legislatures will just continue trying to tweak their lines to squeeze out advantage for whatever party is in power. And competitive districts in this country – already an endangered species – now teeter on extinction.

That is, unless something dramatic changes.

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America. He’s one of the most persistent and thoughtful advocates of selecting House members through proportional representation – a system used in many other countries that would make gerrymandering much more difficult. He's the author of the 2020 book “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” and writes the newsletter Undercurrent Events.

0:00 Intro
1:44 What is gerrymandering?
5:04 The midcycle redistricting wars
8:38 How SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act
14:21 What this means for the midterms
19:32 Proportional representation, explained
25:53 Why proportional representation can end gerrymandering
32:15 Ending the two-party doom loop
48:04 Global comparisons
1:01:18 Passing reforms
1:06:49 The political path to reform
1:13:27 Book Recommendations