By Steve Levy
In Texas, we see Democratic state legislators flying the coop as Republicans try to manipulate the redistricting process to maximize Republican strength.
Meanwhile, in New York, Republicans are complaining that the Democrat-controlled legislature is trying to maximize redistricting to their advantage.
It’s the same old story where both sides of the aisle play games on redistricting to benefit themselves. It’s why reformers have been pushing for decades to get the process out of the hands of self-interested elected officials whose only goal is to protect their incumbency.
When I was county executive, I passed a landmark bill to take the role of redrawing the lines away from the elected officials and place it instead with an independent panel. It was passed with great fanfare with the governor coming to Suffolk County to lend support as I signed the legislation.
But, lo and behold, several years later, when it was about to kick in, the Democrat-controlled legislature abolished the reform and went back to the old system of having the legislature control the process. This was done, of course, because, at the time, the Democrats were in control.
It’s wrong for either party to manipulate this process.
It’s true that the Republicans in Texas are throwing a new fly into the ointment by opting to implement the 10-year redistricting process — which usually coincides with the disclosure of the new census — five years earlier than normal. They’re doing this to try to get as many as five new seats for the GOP prior to the 2026 midterms.
Now, governors from California to New York and elsewhere are warning that they will do the same to maximize seats for Democrats before the next census.
But the Democrats don’t have clean hands here, either.
We need independence. But some complain that even when you appoint good government groups and retired judges to do it, politics will still come into play.
Ironically, it was in New York, where a voter-approved 2014 referendum to establish such independence was sought to be circumvented by the Democrats. When the independent panel indeed established a more independent drawing of the lines, the Democrats immediately sought to ignore it and drew their own partisan lines. The GOP brought suit upholding the independent lines which led to Republicans picking up four crucial seats in New York in 2022, handing the House of Representatives back to the GOP.
The Democratic majority even had the audacity to revamp the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, by forcing out the moderate Democratic Chief Justice, and putting in place a far leftist jurist who supports their gerrymandering.
Unfortunately, even well-intentioned attempts of reform can often fail to produce the desired results. Take California, which in 2008 passed a referendum supported by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to create an independent commission to draw the lines.
If its goal was to create fair districts that would create a better bipartisan balance, it was a failure. At the time of the referendum’s passage, there were 34 Democrats and 19 Republicans from the state’s congressional caucus. By 2012, the number grew to 39 Republicans and only 14 Democrats, and in 2025 there were a mere nine Republican seats left throughout the state.
While much of this can be attributed to changing demographics and political issues of the day, some of it might be attributable to the biases of even those appointees who are claimed to be non-partisan.
So, here is a solution. Why not have the lines redrawn by using artificial intelligence? Just log in that we want the fairest redistricting possible to create as balanced a district as possible from the perspective of demographics and political party registration. That would take the politics out of the system and make our races more competitive. And best of all, it would ultimately make our elected officials more reactive to the center rather than the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum.
Of course, the outcome of AI is only as good as what is inputted. Care must be given to ensure that a balanced group of nonpartisan technocrats prepare the algorithms, as opposed to party hacks. To maximize the potential for delivering the fairest lines possible, take a grouping of five potential maps spit out by the computer and throw them into a lottery barrel and pick a winning plan randomly, as it was once tried in North Carolina before partisan lawsuits marred the process.
There’s no foolproof solution, but AI may present the best of all the options available.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com