Have you heard of dummy-mandering? It’s gerrymandering by dumb people. Let’s say you are the Republican Party and you control the redistricting process in your state, which has five congressional districts: four red, one blue, all equally populated.
The red districts have +15 margins, and the blue one has +20. And you want to turn that blue one red. Well, you’re going to have to pull Republican voters in from other districts because there are only so many of them in the state. So you pull seven points from each of the red districts making those plus eight, and you put them all into the blue district, swinging at 28 points in the Republican direction.
And you end up with +8 red in all districts. But let’s say in the next election, there’s a ten point swing toward Democrats in every district. Before the gerrymander, it wouldn’t matter — even with the swing, the red would stay red, the blue would stay blue. But with the new gerrymandered map, that ten point swing wipes out Republicans in every district. Democrats win them all by two. That’s dummy-mandering.
And right now, according to Princeton experts, the two states with the biggest risk of this happening in them in 2026 are Texas and North Carolina. So we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out.
Ben Sheehan is a political commentator and digital creator. He specializes in civics education, which is showcased in his latest book, What Does the Constitution Actually Say?: A Non-Boring Guide to How Our Democracy Is Supposed to Work. Check out his Substack, Politics Made Easy.
