We need to add 6,000 seats to Congress. I'm serious. | Opinion

2026 may be remembered as the year gerrymandering took center stage. For months, Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have raced to redraw House district lines in hopes of maximizing their party’s odds of controlling Congress in 2027.

In states such as California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Utah, lawmakers have recently redrawn House maps for overtly partisan gain. Virginia Democrats’ effort was struck down earlier this month by the state’s highest court.

The redistricting wars are far from over. In Louisiana v. Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that portions of the Voting Rights Act had been applied in a discriminatory manner, opening the door to additional redistricting battles across the South.

Republicans in Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri and South Carolina are now pushing new House maps in response to the decision. While all four efforts may not succeed, Republicans are likely to gain at least one additional seat before November.

Democrats are losing this year’s redistricting battle, but they are unlikely to stop there. In 2027 and 2028, they will almost certainly continue pursuing their own partisan maps, narrowing Republicans’ current advantage.

But regardless of which party wins the redistricting war, millions of Americans will lose. House districts should be drawn to help communities choose representatives who genuinely reflect their views, not to help politicians predetermine election outcomes. When lawmakers from either party snake district lines across vast regions and carve up cities and towns for political gain, they weaken representation and deepen voter frustration with a Congress many Americans already see as broken.

Congress stopped growing. Gerrymandering got worse.

Still, blaming politicians alone misses the deeper problem. Gerrymandering is not simply the product of partisan greed. It is a predictable consequence of a broken electoral system that rewards lawmakers for manipulating district lines whenever they can.

If Americans want to meaningfully curb gerrymandering, they must look beyond partisan behavior and pursue structural reforms that make such manipulation far less effective.

At the heart of this problem is not just political partisanship, but Supreme Court precedent and a nearly century-old federal law that has artificially frozen the size of Congress for generations.

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 capped the House of Representatives at 435 seats, permanently halting a long-standing practice of expanding Congress alongside America’s growing population.

Yet the Constitution sets no fixed limit on the size of the House, and many of the Founding Fathers envisioned a far more localized system of representation, with relatively small districts serving tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, of citizens.

That was largely how the country began. In 1800, America had 106 House districts serving a population of just 5.3 million, meaning each representative spoke for roughly 50,000 people.

Today, those same 435 House seats represent roughly 341 million Americans, leaving each member of Congress responsible for about 783,000 people on average, a dramatic departure from the nation’s original model of representation.

The problem was compounded in 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders that House districts within each state must contain roughly equal populations. Because America’s population is unevenly distributed, and because Congress remains capped at 435 seats, lawmakers are often forced to draw sprawling, awkwardly shaped districts.

That structural reality does not create gerrymandering on its own, but it makes meaningful manipulation of district lines far easier and far more politically consequential.

A bigger House could weaken political power grabs

The real solution is far more ambitious than another round of partisan map-drawing reforms: Congress should repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act and significantly expand the House of Representatives.

Restoring the representative ratio America had in 1800 would require adding more than 6,000 seats, a dramatic transformation that would fundamentally reshape Congress and the nation’s political system.

Such an expansion might appear crazy at first glance. But a substantially larger House could also produce major democratic benefits far beyond simply reducing the power of gerrymandering.

Smaller districts would make congressional races far more accessible, opening the door to a broader and more diverse pool of candidates. Winning a House seat would no longer require millions of dollars, reducing barriers to entry and weakening the outsized influence of lobbyists.

Accountability would also improve, as members of Congress would more often live closer to, and better understand, the communities they represent. And while gerrymandering would likely not disappear, expanding the House could significantly reduce its power by making districts smaller, more localized and harder to manipulate at scale.

An addition of 6,000 seats to the House would undoubtedly require major procedural reforms and technological modernization. But for a nation of more than 340 million people, those logistical challenges are hardly insurmountable, especially when many state legislatures already operate with far lower representation ratios.

Consider New Hampshire, whose state House includes 400 lawmakers serving just 1.4 million people, or roughly one representative for every 3,500 residents. If that level of representation can function at the state level, there is little reason Congress cannot adapt as well.

If Americans truly want to curb gerrymandering and strengthen democratic representation, they must stop expecting politicians to perfect a structurally flawed system. Instead, they should demand a Congress that once again reflects the representative vision the nation was founded upon. 

Justin Haskins is a New York Times bestselling author, vice president at The Heartland Institute and a senior fellow for Our Republic.