The current gerrymandering wars underscore fundamental problems with the United States’ electoral system. The Fair Representation Act, a bill to establish proportional representation in US House elections, offers a way out of this impasse.

In its decision in Louisiana v. Callais last month, the US Supreme Court weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, clearing the way for districts with a high proportion of racial minorities to be gerrymandered out of existence. In response to this ruling, Republicans have been racing to redraw electoral maps around the country; Democrats have been attempting to do the same, though they notably failed in Virginia, where the state supreme court struck down voter-approved maps.

Each party is trying to rig the game in their favor using every legal means at their disposal. But if the game can be rigged so easily, maybe it’s time to change the rules.

Two notable bills aimed at rehauling the United States’ electoral system have been introduced in Congress in recent years. The For the People Act of 2021 (FPA) would have forced nonpartisan committees to control districting. Yet “independent” commissions are only as independent as the states that appoint them. The bill would have required commissions made up of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five independents. But there is little preventing states from selecting independents who reliably lean toward one party or the other. The result could be commissions that look neutral on paper while reproducing many of the same partisan incentives that shape districting today.

A different and more promising proposal was introduced during this session of Congress: the Fair Representation Act (FRA). The FRA would create what are called “multimember districts” for the House of Representatives. This structure would create new, larger districts (each pooling three to five existing districts together) and produce proportional representation across them. Voters in each of these new districts would rank their candidates in order of preference. Initially, only the first choice votes are counted; the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and people who voted for them have their votes rolled over to whichever candidate they ranked second. This process is repeated until the number of candidates is equal to the number of seats for the district.

This new system would keep the overall number of representatives in the House identical but would make gerrymandering significantly more difficult. Rather than trying to police gerrymandering after the fact, the FRA changes the electoral rules so that manipulating district boundaries produces far fewer political rewards while lowering the barriers that keep new political forces out of Congress. To see why, it helps to understand how congressional representation works today.

How Representation Works Now

Imagine five districts, each with a population of twenty people. Forty typically vote for Party A and sixty for Party B. If the districts are drawn fairly, then about two districts would go for Party A and three for Party B. But if elected officials decide to draw the districts in a gerrymandered way, it is possible to:

1. Obliterate the minority electorally by creating districts with twelve Party B voters and eight Party A voters in each. This approach can be risky for Party B, since it gives Party A a chance of winning many of the districts if, say, the election happens in a year when Party B is very unpopular and Party A voters turn out at a much higher rate.

2. Secure a steady majority by creating a “voter sink” district: drawing one homogeneous district with twenty Party A voters, and four districts with thirteen or fourteen Party B voters and six to seven Party A voters. This ensures Party B gets the majority even if their voters turn out in low numbers.

3. Invert the majority by creating a vote sink for two Party B districts. Districts 1 and 2 now have twenty Party B voters each, and districts 3, 4, and 5 have six to seven Party B voters and thirteen to fourteen Party A voters. This strategy secures three districts for Party A, even though it only represents 40 percent of the overall vote.

In 2019, the Supreme Court said in the case Rucho v. Common Cause:

Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust. . . . Such gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic principles” . . . [but that] does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary. . . . We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.

The last hurdle to excessive gerrymandering was Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevented the removal of electoral representation based on race. The wording of the law was ambiguous and at odds with the Rucho v. Common Cause decision. This made it an all-too-attractive target for opponents to challenge and present to the Supreme Court, with the results we now see.

The route to a more representative system, then, will have to come through nonjudicial means. Republicans have been aggressively dishonest in the gerrymandering battles, but Democrats are not innocent either. Working people on both sides of the aisle are being drawn out of meaningful representation while their legislators argue about who gets to draw the lines. The FRA offers a way out of this dead-end conflict.

The Benefit of the FRA

The proportional multimember districts created by the FRA would force two seats for Party A and three for Party B in our hypothetical example. This means that how legislators “cut” electoral district maps would matter far less.

This alternative system is not only fairer but also entirely changes the incentives for political parties and candidates. Representatives would no longer be able to ignore 40 percent of their district. And smaller movements — independents, third parties, and regional interests — would finally have a real path to a seat. Since districts would elect up to five representatives, the share of the vote needed to win a seat would fall to roughly 25 percent in a three-member district and 17 percent in a five-member district. That is a much lower bar than having to win an outright majority in a single-member district.

It also rewards candidates that can build larger coalitions. In a winner-take-all system, you win by mobilizing your base and by suppressing the other side. In a ranked-choice system, you also want to be the second or third choice of voters who don’t share your primary affiliation — which means being broadly acceptable matters more than being maximally partisan. Safe seats disappear, and with them the complacency of representatives who answer only to their party.

And for voters, far fewer ballots get wasted. In a standard single-member district, every vote cast for the losing candidate counts for nothing. Here your vote has a lot more chance to matter, which over time could meaningfully reduce the apathy that keeps people from showing up at all

The current system doesn’t just filter out parties — it filters out the kind of representative who doesn’t have a war chest, a donor network, or a party machine behind them. Multimember districts lower that barrier too. Any group that gets above the 20 percent threshold earns representation, which would favor organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Working Families Party (WFP).

As in any representative system, there are limits. Below 20 percent, representation dwindles. For large states with smaller populations, there may still need to be only one representative per district, given that the Constitution leaves election organization to the states. No system is perfect. But a system where your vote counts for something is better than one where the map decides before you even show up.

Even if Republicans gerrymander more aggressively, it is still possible they will lose the midterms. But if those maps hold, they will entrench an imbalance that will outlast the next election. The conversation needs to shift from who can manipulate the system enough to win the next race to how to build a system that discourages such cheating in the first place. The FRA offers a route to doing so.