U.S. congressional representation gaps as determined by gerrymandering, eligible census counts and voter identification policy disparities in blue and red states rose to an issue of feverish national attention over hotly contested Texas redistricting actions which will add five more Republican U.S. House seats.
Overall, every state regardless of population is guaranteed two U.S. Senate seats and at least one in the U.S. House.
However, the Reapportionment Act of 1929 caps the total maximum number of House seats at 435, with most states theoretically apportioned a number of additional seats proportionally corresponding with its aggregate population of the 50 states according to the most recent decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution.
Although it might be widely assumed that that House seat apportionment would reflect the relative percentages of Democratic and Republican voter preferences in each state, frequent and significant gaps indicate otherwise.
For example, although President Trump won nearly 46% of the vote in New Mexico, none of the state's three seats are held by Republicans.
Similarly, Connecticut voted nearly 42% for the president along with 36% of those from Massachusetts, yet neither state has a single U.S. Republican congressional representative.
California saw Trump win 38% of the vote but just nine out of 52 congressional seats (17%); New Jersey had Trump at 46% of the vote, but has only three Republicans out of the 12 congressional seats; Maryland has only one Republican representative despite 34% of the vote going toward the president; Trump won 43% of New York votes but holds only seven out of 26 House seats; and Oregon has a 24% Democratic lead while the Trump wing took 41% of the vote.
Ironically and hypocritically, several Democratic Texas state lawmakers who fled the state to avoid voting on the redistricting map chose to seek refuge in Illinois, arguably the nation’s most politically gerrymandered example which divides its 17-member congressional delegation into 14 Democratic-leaning metropolitan districts and only three Republican-leaning rural districts.
Federal government census numbers which determine how many House seats are apportioned to each state have a concurrent impact upon how each taxpayer’s money is spent.
Illegal immigrants who are now counted draw upon limited economic and social service resources and dilute the influence of districts that follow federal law as intended by our Founders.
According to a Center for Immigration Studies report released last year, districts with higher illegal immigrant populations tend to vote blue.
Of 24 districts where one in five adults is not an American citizen, 20 were won by a Democrat in 2022 in contrast to just five of the 54 districts where 98% of adults are citizens.
As observed by Commission Chairman Peter Kirsanow, the millions of illegal aliens who have flooded the country during the Biden presidency on top of 2020’s overcounting in blue states and undercounting in red states has resulted in a "fundamental transformation."
Little wonder that President Trump recently said on a Truth Social post that he's ordering a "new and highly accurate census" based on "information gained from the Presidential election of 2024" where people who are in our country illegally will not be counted.
Although the Supreme Court blocked him from trying to get the census to count only citizens in 2019, they left the door open to trying again in the future, provided that his administration could give better reasoning.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House has already taken action to stop the census from balkanizing the country by quietly shuttering the Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations in February.
Nevertheless, while as of June 2025 36 states required voters to present identification in order to vote at the polls on Election Day, many states provide for exceptions even to this basic mandate.
Of these ID requirement states, 25 require voters to present identification containing a photograph, with certain exceptions, and 11 states do not explicitly require photo identification whereas the remaining 14 states don’t even require voters to present identification to vote at the polls on Election Day.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, eleven states, many with mostly GOP-controlled legislatures, tend to have strict voter ID laws
As should be expected, California has become the latest battleground over voter identification requirements, where under a new state law, local governments will be prohibited from compelling voters to present identification to cast a ballot in an election.
Additionally, in response to the Texas redistricting, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., proposes to ask voters to throw out the map drawn by an independent redistricting commission and approve a new one drafted by the Golden State legislature that would lock in five more Democratic House seats to give his party 48 out of 52.
In any case, California Democrats along with many from other blue states now face another redistricting migration problem of their own making as voters and corporate taxpayers flee for red states.
California lost about 1.5 million residents between 2020 and 2024; New York bled about a million; and Illinois shed approximately 400,000, while Texas gained about 750,000 and Florida added 875,000.
Newsom's declaration that he intends to "fight fire with fire" is a curious choice of metaphor considering his state's feckless response to devastating forest fires that recently swept through Los Angeles.
Having burned down his state's economy, record numbers of citizens are redistricting themselves . . . with moving vans.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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