This summer, the Texas legislature redrew the boundaries of Texas’ 38 districts for the House of Representatives so that five House seats will be gained by Republicans in the 2026 House elections. The plan passed the Texas House and Senate and was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbot. In response, California voters will vote this November to redistrict their House of Representatives seats to offset the would-be Republican gains in Texas with Democratic gains in California. Missouri is now redrawing its House districts to benefit republicans.

The voting system used in most of the United States, as well as other English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, is called first past the post (FPTP). In FPTP, all the voters vote once for their preferred candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins; during legislative elections, only one representative represents a constituency. FPTP tends to result in a two-party system (i.e. Democrats and Republicans, Labour and Conservatives) because having many parties increases the likelihood of a candidate or party winning without a majority supporting them, so voters tend to vote strategically, voting for the candidate most likely to win whom they dislike the least. When FPTP is used to elect members of the legislative branch, the amount of each party elected to the legislature can differ greatly from the preferences of the voters. For example, in the 2024 North Carolina House of Representatives election, Democratic candidates received around 50% of the vote but won 40.8% of the House seats. FPTP also makes legislative elections susceptible to gerrymandering; all of the examples in the top paragraph are examples of gerrymandering.

An alternative to First Past the Post voting is proportional representation. Proportional representation is a type of voting system where the percentage of a political party’s seats in the legislature or elected body is directly proportional to the percentage of votes they received. The most common form of proportional representation is party-list proportional representation, where voters choose a party (or candidates within a party) and the parties are given seats based on how many votes they received. This is the voting system in countries such as Poland, Germany, Norway, Argentina, and Croatia. Single Transferable Vote is another type of proportional representation where voting districts have multiple representatives, voters choose their representatives by ranking the candidates in order of preference, and are transferred from their preferred choice to their second preference, and so on until all the seats in a district are filled. STV is the voting system used in Ireland, Australia, and Malta.