How Proportional Representation Can Counter Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Ruling

The Supreme Court’s decision this week to dismantle what remained of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 compels a serious conversation about structural reforms to restore electoral fairness. By effectively granting Republican-led states a blank check to racially gerrymander Black Americans out of electoral power, the court has undermined its own legitimacy and weakened the nation’s multiracial democracy.

Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor specializing in election law, called Wednesday’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais “one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century.” Hasen, whose research was cited in Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, is widely respected for his measured approach. He argued that Democrats must now “consider reform of the Supreme Court itself—a conclusion I had been resisting until the Court made this unavoidable.”

While structural reform of the Court is essential, there is another critical reform Congress and the president could implement at the next opportunity: abolishing the House’s single-member district system in favor of proportional representation.

Constitutional Authority for Electoral Reform

Article 1 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to set the “time, manner, and place” of federal elections. States administer elections within the framework Congress establishes. In the first half of the 19th century, Congress allowed states significant discretion in designing their electoral systems, provided they elected the apportioned number of representatives to the House. (The Senate, which became directly elected in the early 20th century, is not part of this discussion.)

Many states adopted single-member districts, a system that persists today. Under this method, state lawmakers divide a state into congressional districts, each electing one representative to the House. While this system offers benefits—such as regional diversity and direct constituent representation—it also has significant drawbacks, the most glaring of which is gerrymandering.

The Origins of Gerrymandering

The term “gerrymandering” traces its name to Elbridge Gerry, an early American statesman who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812. His tenure coincided with the 1810 census and the subsequent reapportionment of House seats, which occurs every 10 years. To maintain control of Massachusetts’s state legislature, Gerry’s fellow Democratic-Republicans drew an overtly manipulated electoral map. After Gerry signed the new map into law, Federalist critics ridiculed the practice so thoroughly that it became permanently associated with his name—much to his dismay.

This history is familiar to most high school students studying American civics. Less well known, however, is that single-member districts were not the only method used in the early republic.

An Alternative: General-Ticket Voting

One common alternative was the “general-ticket” election system. Under this approach, voters cast ballots for as many candidates as there were seats to fill, and the candidates with the most votes were elected. While this system had its own flaws—particularly its tendency to create winner-take-all outcomes where one party could dominate an entire state’s delegation with a simple majority—it avoided the extreme distortions of single-member district gerrymandering.

As the Supreme Court’s latest ruling demonstrates, the current system is broken. Proportional representation offers a path forward to restore fairness and representation to American elections.