Post #54627 by wzambon on the US Policy board

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In Wisconsin, Democrats won the statewide vote in 2022 and lost seats in the legislature. They've won every recent statewide election for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and U.S. senator, yet Republicans hold near-supermajority control of both legislative chambers.

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In fact, Wisconsin requires Democrats to win 59% of the vote to achieve what Republicans get with 41%. The efficiency gap, a measure of wasted votes between parties, sits at 15%. Wisconsin's maps were drawn to predetermine outcomes, and they work exactly as designed.

In Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Florida, election results are functionally predetermined regardless of how people vote. In these five states, the Republican party has locked in power through cartographic precision and voter suppression, essentially creating systems where electoral competition has been engineered out of existence.

Federal courts documented exactly how this works. In places like Milwaukee, Democratic voters are "cracked," split into four districts and diluted with rural Republicans. Madison's Democrats are "packed," concentrated so heavily that 80% of their votes are wasted on seats that would be won with 51%.

In 2024, Wisconsin's congressional delegation split 6-2 Republican despite the state voting for Biden in 2020 and electing a Democratic senator in 2022. The state Supreme Court finally ordered new state legislative maps in 2023, but the damage to democratic norms has been done: an entire decade where the party with fewer votes held veto-proof power. The court's ruling also only addressed state legislative districts, leaving the gerrymandered congressional maps that produced the 6-2 split intact

North Carolina's story is particularly noteworthy. In 2022, under court-ordered fair maps, the state elected a 7-7 congressional delegation with Democrats winning 49% of the vote and getting 50% of the seats. Then Republicans won control of the state Supreme Court and immediately redrew the maps. The 2024 result: Democrats won 46% of votes and got 29% of seats, a 10-4 Republican delegation. The efficiency gap jumped to 20%.

The new maps split Charlotte's Black communities across three districts. They cracked Research Triangle voters into safe Republican seats.

They transformed competitive districts into double-digit Republican victories. A federal court noted that one district's lines were so precise they carved out specific neighborhoods, even individual streets, based on racial voting patterns. North Carolina also enacted voter ID laws that courts found targeted Black voters "with almost surgical precision," closed polling sites in minority areas, and eliminated Sunday early voting used predominantly by Black churches.

State Republicans were explicit about their intent. Representative Destin Hall said the quiet part loud: "We're going to draw maps that favor Republicans. That's what elections are about."

Texas Republicans control 66% of congressional seats with 54% of the vote. The state's 38 House seats split 25-13 Republican, achieved through some of the most aggressive gerrymandering in the country.

Austin, the state capital and a Democratic stronghold, no longer has its own representative. The city is split among six districts, five of which stretch hundreds of miles into rural Texas. Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are similarly divided. The districts look like abstract art, with tentacles reaching out to grab just enough Republican voters.

Texas has largely eliminated competitive House districts through redistricting. In 2024, all 25 Republican seats were won by double-digit margins. The maps are so effective that Democrats could win the statewide vote by 5 points and still be a minority in the congressional delegation.

Texas pairs this gerrymandering with aggressive voter suppression. Senate Bill 1 created new ID requirements, restricted mail voting, banned drive-through voting, and made it a felony for election officials to send unsolicited ballot applications. Harris County saw mail ballot rejections jump from 0.6% to 19.2%. Texas closed 750 polling locations since 2012, with Dallas County alone eliminating 74 sites in areas that are 41% Latino and 22% Black. The state has challenged 450,000 voter registrations since 2020.

Ohio Republicans took a different path by simply ignoring the law. The state Supreme Court struck down Republican-drawn maps as unconstitutional. The Republicans submitted new maps. The court struck those down too. This happened five times. Finally, a federal court said Ohio had run out of time and would have to use the unconstitutional maps for 2022. The result of the “new maps” was that Republicans won 53% of votes and took 67% of congressional seats, a 10-5 split. In the statehouse, they achieved supermajority control in both chambers despite competitive statewide races.

Ohio's efficiency gap reached 16%, with Cincinnati and Columbus were heavily cracked and packed. Cleveland's Cuyahoga County, heavily Democratic, was split into four districts, three of them safe Republican.

Governor Mike DeWine, who sits on the redistricting commission, admitted the maps were gerrymandered but voted for them anyway, saying the court's timeline was impossible to meet.

Florida was a purple state. In 2018, Republicans won the governorship by 0.4%. In 2020, Trump won by 3.3%. Competitive elections were the norm.

Then Governor Ron DeSantis did something unprecedented: he personally drew the congressional maps. The legislature had prepared its own maps, but DeSantis vetoed them and submitted his own. His maps turned the entire state into safe seats.

The transformation was immediate. Florida went from multiple competitive races to zero. The delegation went from 16-11 Republican to 20-8. The efficiency gap exploded to levels that would trigger automatic review in other democracies.

DeSantis's maps were so aggressive they violated Florida's own constitution, which prohibits partisan gerrymandering. The Florida Supreme Court upheld them anyway in July 2024, eliminating Black congressional representation for the first time since 1992.

Florida removed nearly 1 million voters from active rolls in 2023 alone, with 90% being Democrats or independents, while Senate Bill 7050 caused third-party voter registrations to plummet 97% between 2020 and 2024. The state's election crimes unit has arrested over 60 people, mostly Black citizens with past convictions who received voter cards from the state itself, achieving just 25 convictions with minimal penalties. Combined with drop box restrictions, mandatory re-registration for mail ballots every two years, and $250,000 fines for registration groups, Florida has engineered one-party dominance.

These five states control 89 House seats, more than 20% of Congress. Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida alone account for enough gerrymandered seats to flip control of the House. Add voter suppression affecting 1-3 million Americans, and a minority party can maintain majority power indefinitely.

The Senate's equal representation per state also adds to the massive partisan imbalance. Wyoming's 580,000 residents get the same two senators as California's 39 million. The 50 Democratic senators represent 41.5 million more people than the 50 Republican senators. The median Senate seat leans Republican by 3 points, forcing Democrats to win Republican-leaning states just to achieve parity. The result of the Senate imbalance means one party needs to win millions more votes than the other for equal representation.

Since 2020, states enacted 78 restrictive voting laws. Georgia plans to purge 455,000 voters in 2025, the largest in U.S. history. Arizona closed 320 polling places. Nationwide, 19 million Americans were removed from voter rolls between 2020-2022, a 21% increase, with purge rates 40% higher in formerly Voting Rights Act protected jurisdictions. When combined with efficiency gaps exceeding 7% in multiple states, recovery becomes nearly impossible without external intervention.

Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Florida have all crossed these lines. The party in power when maps are drawn stays in power regardless of voter preference.

The evidence shows that structural advantages mean Republicans can control the U.S. House and Senate with significantly fewer votes than Democrats would need for the same result.

Wisconsin proves a party can lose by 200,000 votes and gain seats. North Carolina shows how court capture enables democratic collapse. Texas demonstrates minority rule at scale. Ohio reveals what happens when courts are ignored. Florida shows how quickly purple can become predetermined.

When millions are purged from voter rolls while districts are surgically rigged, when registration is criminalized while maps predetermine outcomes: the system hasn't tilted, it's collapsed.

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References

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Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute v. Byrd, No. SC2023-1333 (Fla. 2025).

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https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/the-five-us-stat...

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"We're going to draw maps that favor Republicans. That's what elections are about."

This exemplifies exactly the problem with today’s undemocratic Republican Party.

They believe it’s OK to cheat in elections.

In a democracy, politicians don’t choose voters, voters choose politicians.

Republicans know they can’t win on issues, so they cheat.

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