Redrawing the Path to Hell with "Good" Intentions

The recent US Supreme Court decision triggered many to (re)read the September 2025 Gazette column:https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2025/09/14/opinion/gerrymander-proliferation-and-constitutional-dtente/7816.html. SCotUS vacated the stay on Alabama's 2023 Congressional map May 11. Governor Ivey called a special primary for August 11. The 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th Districts will use the map State legislators drew before the federal three judge panel threw it out. Republicans tout the order a win against racial gerrymandering. Democrats decry it furthers Black voter disenfranchisement in a State approximately 2/7ths Black - thus warranting 2 Black congresspersons. The duopoly parties continue on with rhetoric for their machines. Neither will stipulate the actual problem, because the actual problem increasingly empowers politburo members installed to the US House via the 435 cap.

The actual problem? Alabama only has seven congressional districts in a State of five million people. The Constitutionally correct result is one Representative for every 30,000 persons. One can’t find the word democracy in the Constitution which guarantees a representative republic; one also can not find the number 435 in the document. Currently Alabama is designed to have 167 Representatives in the US HoR instead of only seven. Both parties have spent several score arguing about how to draw seven lines through a population the Constitution requires 167 districts. Little surprise the lines look like racial gerrymanders. Of course Black voters get diluted. With seven districts every line crosses many communities/groups. With 167 there's no room to draw outrage as it chills capacity for packin' and crackin' maps to increasingly worse depths of Hell.

The relevant text is Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. “The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.” Every additional 30,000 persons within a State earns one more Representative. The Framers designed a House that grew within each geopolitical unit [State] in the coalitions' population.

It grew until 1911 with the exception of War Between the States anomalies. The 1911 Apportionment Act capped the US House at 435 members. After the 1920 census the House refused any reapportionment. Some argue rural members would not surrender seats to industrial cities disproportionately becoming a majority of the population; others claim the progressives championing white nationalism didn't like the prospects of House members mirroring the growing population. Nine years of machinations proffered The Reapportionment Act of 1929 [PL 71-13] signed June 18, which made 435 permanent. There was no constitutional amendment, no ratifying convention, no vote of the States. Congress stopped counting the way the Constitution required and unilaterally dictated 435 permanent.

The 2020 census put Alabama at 5,024,279 persons. Divide by 30,000 and the State is authorized one hundred and sixty-seven Reps in the House. Each of the seven Reps Alabama unconstitutionally represents holds an average of 717,754 persons, roughly 24 times the Constitutionally correct maximum ratio. The arithmetic generates the same answer in every State. The national average district holds about 761,000 persons. Our Republic's Framers wouldn’t recognize this as a House of Representatives.

Every Voting Rights Act case decided in Alabama has been litigated inside this '435 Cage' - dare I type Thunderdome? Wesberry v. Sanders [1964] ruled congressional districts within a State must hold roughly equal populations. Justice Black wrote for the six-three majority, “as nearly as is practicable, one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” The oft spouted 'one man, one vote' principle seems silly to anyone who understands how a Constitutionally correct Electoral College operates and how small population States still have two Senators. Justice Black noted an Atlanta district two or three times the size of a rural Georgia district reduced the Atlantan’s vote to a fraction of a rural neighbor’s. Sadly Black did not ask why the Atlanta district was so large in the first place. He also did not ask whether Alabama by 1964 would've had 26 House members instead of their paltry six members. Hugo Black fixed inequality inside the '435 Cage' he ignored or was simply too poorly educated to understand the Constitutionally correct result.

June 2023 SCotUS ruled five to four in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama’s seven-district map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority. The Court ordered Alabama to draw a second majority-Black district. The State legislature refused on the first try. A three judge panel appointed a special master to redraw lines. AI generated/independently (re)drawn maps cannot solve the problem. The November 2024 remedial map seated Representative Shomari Figures, the Democrat Party candidate in the redrawn Second District. Low voter turnout primary installed a full blown 'Trump Sucker' candidate instead of one of the other 2 decent Republican candidates paving the way for Figures' general election win. Closed primary results will be even more deleterious/bipolar.

Three years later the incompetent Court reversed itself. In Louisiana v. Callais [April 28, 2026] six justices ruled drawing a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act was itself a racial gerrymander forbidden by the 14th Amendment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson (also no friends of civil rights) dissented without substance - little reason to think they're any better educated than Roberts, et al. Alabama immediately asked SCotUS to vacate the injunction w.r.t. the 2023 map. Two weeks later, the Court did so, via unsigned order, with the same three justices dissenting again. The Voting Rights Act remedy SCotUS required in 2023, was unconstitutional under the 2026 SCotUS... no discussion of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 solution. The fault my dear citizens is not in the Voting Rights Act, but in ourselves... for allowing this unconstitutional abomination this past century.

Both sides are correct about the other’s hypocrisy... sadly, two wrongs make for more wrongdoing. Republicans assert lines drawn to produce a Black-majority district are race-conscious lines. Democrats assert a seven-district map in a State approximately 2/7ths Black, with single-member 'winner-take-all' districts dilutes Black voting strength without something like Section 2 policing the lines. Both assertions turn on the same fact. There are seven districts and lines must be drawn somewhere. Neither side wants to admit the 435 cap [1929] is the source of the problem because it will attenuate the increasing concentration of power Blue/Red duopoly parties have enjoyed this past century. So the redistricting 'arms race' proliferates as it further decays our nation.

Under 167 districts, the conflict dissolves redistricting proliferation. A district of 30,000 persons in north Birmingham is mostly Black because north Birmingham is mostly Black. A district of 30,000 in southeastern Mobile County is mostly Black because southeastern Mobile County is mostly Black. No mapmaker required to pack or crack voters. The demographic geography does the mapping as designed. A 167 district Alabama elects between forty to fifty Black members of Congress without any Court having to pen one word about race. Or it elects fewer, because the voters chose differently in competitive races, which Alabamians have not had since the early 1920s. Either way, racial gerrymandering arguments vanish, because lines no longer cut through communities... they circle them.

The '435 Cage' survives because it pays. A district of three quarters of a million voters can only be reached at scale through paid media and PAC infrastructure. A candidate in a district of 30,000 can reach all constituents in good shoes between Labor Day and first frost. The current cap funnels every viable campaign through the same five PAC bundlers, the same three media markets, the same duopoly parties. Dissolve the cap and bundlers' leverage dilutes twenty-four fold. Leadership PACs, the Chamber of Commerce/Business Council of Alabama’s Progress PAC, the trial bar, teachers’ unions, etc. -- every one of them functions inside the cage. There is no 'uncap the House' sponsor because it promotes the general welfare instead of enabling more Comrade Bide/Trump championed political theft. The two soviet parties agree on this the same way they agree on the Federal Reserve and DHS (or KGB if one prefers the Russian nomenclature) distortions.

The 435 cap also aids and abets logrolling. Again, the 435 number, along with words like 'Democracy' can not be found in the Constitution. In the '435 Cage' marginal votes on a close measure proffers great leverage. A Representative can get an earmark, a chairman can get a tax exemption inserted in the small hours of a Friday before Christmas, a courthouse named after a family member, etc... Twenty-five times as many Representatives make omnibus negotiations untenable. The 2a.m. amendment dies. The 1,500 page Continuing Resolution dies. Bills get smaller because the trading 'market' dies - i.e., the reason no sitting duopoly party member will propose lifting the cap. Bipartisanship won't solve the problem; party fidelity over the Constitution is an integral part of the problem.

The fix is derived from the Framers' design. Congress can adjust the HoR by 500 members apportioned among the States per decennial census until the ratio returns to one Representative per 30,000 persons. The current endpoint is a House of roughly 11,000 members representing a country of roughly 350 million persons. Restoration takes generations, the way the damage/decay took generations, restoring the Constitutional ceiling via the document's text, without an amendment.

The first objection is 11,000 House members will not fit in the Capitol. The Constitution does not require one building. State delegations can meet in their States. Committees can meet by encrypted video the way most Alabama bank boards already meet when the Atlanta airport is socked in. Federal offices currently filling 435 marble palaces in Washington can be smaller, cheaper and closer to home. A country running grocery logistics on a smartphone can seat 167 Alabama House members without trepidation.

The second objection is political. Neither soviet party will propose the fix, because the duopoly is the special interest constituency the 435 cap now serves over the general welfare. The incompetent Court will not order the fix, because it has spent sixty years arguing about how to draw seven lines and has never asked why there are only seven. The voters will not demand the fix, because they've been conditioned to argue about which version of the seven-district cage is more righteous, rather than asking who built the 435 cage and why it still stands.

Both sides could have what they want under one hundred and sixty-seven districts. Neither party will ask, because neither party benefits from a House of Representatives that actually represents as designed. The "Problem Solvers" Caucus won't solve the problem, but will give us sweet platitudes and rhetoric as races get more safe/less competitive with increasing concentration of power. Bush v. Gore provided a case with standing since the 435 cap generated financial [job] loss where a Constitutionally correct Electoral College had Gore winning the popular vote and the electoral vote totals. Does anyone really think a politburo member like Al Gore wants representative government? The player to watch in the months to come is NAACP/LDF efforts. They led the charge to shepherd the Figures win last cycle and now understand playing in the '435 Cage' is folly. If they live up to their moniker 'advancing coloured people' - competition and representation will have the HoR mirroring the people as designed... the path to Constitutionally correct diversity, equity and inclusion. As for myself, I have a dream that one day Portia Shepherd caliber activists are elected to Congress for the advancement of her constituents.

Instead, the August 11 primary will run on a map both bases explicitly hate as they enjoy further empowerment from voter disenfranchisement. The general election will offer a seven-member delegation of uncompetitive races general election voters will loathe and continue Congressional approval ratings barely into double digits if history is any guide. The next decennial census will produce another round of the same fight under whatever 'doctrine dujour' SCotUS is espousing.

In closing, the Framers designed a House to grow with the country. Congress refused. Until we go back to apportioning as the text requires, every redistricting fight in this State will end the way this one did. A Governor announcing a victory over the Constitution she swore to uphold. A Speaker thanking her. A Supreme Court congratulating itself on a doctrine it invented Tuesday then will overrule Thursday. Leaving the rest of us trying to impact a dysfunctional '435 Cage' we accept and call a House.

THE VIEWS OF SUBMITTED EDITORIALS MAY NOT BE THE EXPRESS VIEWS OF THE ALABAMA GAZETTE.