Commentary: Canada's redistricting model could solve the US gerrymandering death spiral

The current round of House remapping around the nation was fueled by the president asking Texas for "five more seats" so that Republicans could retain control of the House in this year's midterm elections.

Historically, the party that holds the White House loses House seats in the midterms. Since 1938, the only exceptions to this outcome were Bill Clinton's second term in 1998 (Democrats gained five seats) and George W. Bush's first term in 2002 (Republicans gained eight seats). In both of these cases, the current president's job approval rating was above 60 percent.

In contrast, Trump's approval rate languishes in the mid 30s. The tea leaves suggest that House Republicans seeking to retain their seat need every advantage available to overcome the headwinds of rising inflation, high gas prices, and an unpopular war that was facilitated by their unwillingness to rein in the executive branch.

Much like House maps, districts in parliamentary systems are vulnerable to gerrymandering. In countries that use such systems, control of the government is determined by winning seats in parliament: The party or coalition that holds the majority of seats holds the levers of power. Given the large number of countries using a parliamentary system, one would expect widespread rampant gerrymandering.

Yet many have installed checks and balances to prevent such egregious partisan actions.

The nation's northern neighbor sets an example that is worth emulating. Canada uses a parliamentary system for its government. To prevent gerrymandering that gives one party advantages on Election Day, Canada uses small independent commissions that work to keep the influence of elections in the hands of the voters, not the politicians. They codified this into law in 1964 with the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, effectively eliminating opportunities for gerrymandering.

Setting this law aside, the redistricting mechanics in Canada have many similarities to the U.S. First, Canada allocates the number of districts (called ridings) in each province based on population. These numbers are updated once each decade after its decennial census, much like congressional apportionment in the U.S. As the population shifts across the provinces, the number of ridings moves with such changes.

Each province has an independent Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission that is charged to set the riding boundaries. Once the boundaries are set, public hearings are held to give everyone the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and the final riding boundaries. Elected officials can speak their mind, as they always do, but are not given any extra weight in these public forums.

Criteria used to define the riding boundaries include population equality, preserving communities of interest or identity, recognizing historical patterns of previous boundaries, and keeping geographic size of ridings manageable. These criteria are like the ideals used by states when drawing congressional maps.

A review of the riding boundaries from 2023 suggests that the process works well, giving voters what they deserve - namely, a say in which party represents them in Parliament. In contrast, the shapes and configurations of U.S. congressional districts provide a far more egregious picture, with both parties guilty of disrespecting voters for their own gain.

Much of the Canadian process sounds like what is done in the U.S. Where the two deviate is that partisan provincial legislators do not control the riding boundary process. As voters and citizens, they can provide input. Yet the final decision is made by the independent commissions, not by partisan elected officials. The entire process takes approximately two years.

In contrast, partisan state legislatures control several of the congressional mapping processes in the U.S., infusing it with self-serving motives and objectives that marginalize and disrespect the interests of voters.

Given advances in computational redistricting and how congressional maps can be drawn algorithmically, dissecting state populations with scalpel-like precision, the only way to prevent politicians from stealing the power of the vote from the people is to either follow Canada's lead and use non-partisan commissions in every state, or eliminate the electoral college entirely and base representation on popular vote. Both options would require constitutional amendments that in today's caustic political environment are highly unlikely to ever occur.

The end result of such changes would be that Republican voters in Massachusetts and Illinois would have a better chance at representation, as would Democratic voters in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

The situation faced by the current House remapping wars has no well-defined end point. No matter how gerrymandered a House map may appear, algorithmic tools can always carve out yet another partisan district until one party can win nearly every seat in a state. The real problem in the U.S. is that partisanship even exists within the remapping process. No algorithms exist that can neutralize such a force.

What Canada discovered 60 years ago is a solution that would work in the U.S. The roadblock is that partisan politics prevents it from ever crossing the border.

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Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a computer science professor in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a data scientist, he uses his expertise in risk-based analytics to address problems in public policy. He is the director of the Institute of Computational Research at the University of Illinois. This piece was originally published by The Hill.

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This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 1:04 AM.