Washington, D.C., July 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In an open letter released today, over 500 scholars called on Congress to adopt proportional representation for U.S. House elections, a system that inhibits gerrymandering. The signatories include the country’s leading democracy, voting rights, and redistricting scholars, including Daron Acemoğlu, Steven Levitsky, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Nikolas Bowie, Lawrence Tribe, Pamela Karlan, Lee C. Bolinger, Barbara Geddes, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, and Larry Sabato.
Gerrymandering is made possible by single-member districts, explain the scholars, which are uniquely vulnerable to the practice. “This electoral system makes the drawing of district lines consequential in the first place. As long as that system remains intact, distorted election outcomes will persist.”
Proportional systems instead use multi-member districts, allocating seats to parties based on their share of the vote. If a party wins 40 percent of the vote, it would secure a corresponding 40 percent of the seats. Under proportional representation, gerrymandering yields little advantage.
“There’s a reason we Americans rarely hear about gerrymandering elsewhere,” says Grant Tudor of Protect Democracy, which organized the letter. “It’s not because other democracies have more virtuous politicians or more responsive courts. It’s because most use a proportional system of representation, which makes gerrymandering ineffective in the first place.” A recent report by Protect Democracy, When Maps Don’t Matter, examines how proportional systems make gerrymandering prohibitively difficult.
The scholars’ letter comes on the heels of Louisiana v. Callais, the 2026 Supreme Court ruling that sharply curtailed the Voting Rights Act’s protections for minority representation in congressional maps. As redistricting battles rage ahead of the 2026 midterms, the letter proposes an alternative system where every vote counts equally, regardless of where a voter lives.
“There should be little doubt that the single-member district system is failing to deliver fair and representative outcomes,” conclude the scholars. “We urge Congress to adopt a proportional system of representation, solving the gerrymandering problem at its source.”
Read the report on the Protect Democracy website: https://protectdemocracy.org/maps
Read the letter from scholars: Proportional Representation is the Fix
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Protect Democracy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group working to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. Protect Democracy United is a registered 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. Protect Democracy Project is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization. For more information visit: ProtectDemocracy.org
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