Rotten Boroughs in Texas
Up until 1832, many seats in the British Parliament were known as “rotten boroughs.” Parliamentary maps had been drawn up centuries before, and had never been updated, so they bore limited relation to where the British people actually lived. In 1831, for instance, the borough of Old Sarum, a one-time cathedral town which had fallen on hard times, contained three houses and seven voters, but, as it had since 1295, it still sent two representatives to Parliament. Old Sarum wasn’t exceptional.
By the time of the 1831 general election, out of 406 elected members [of the House of Commons], 152 were chosen by fewer than 100 voters each, and 88 by fewer than fifty voters.[1]
Meanwhile, Manchester, which the Industrial Revolution had turned into Britain’s second-largest city, had no representatives in Parliament at all.
Many of those 152 rotten boroughs were controlled by a single wealthy individual who could bribe or coerce its voters into electing whomever he chose. (Britain didn’t require a secret ballot until 1872.) For centuries, parliamentary seats from rotten boroughs were sold like pieces of cheese. The Reform Bill of 1832, which eliminated much of this, was actually something of a miracle, because it required members of Parliament to change a system which (a) was an ensconced tradition, and (b) served their own personal interests. The Reform Bill took a long time, and a lot of pressure, up to and including riots in the streets, but finally, after decades of effort, it got passed.
The United States has never sent someone to Congress from a district the size of Old Sarum, but we have our own version of rotten boroughs: gerrymandered seats in the House of Representatives. Seven voters can’t elect a congressman, but we have other ways of slanting – sometimes steeply slanting – the playing field.
Under our system, state legislatures draw the congressional districts, so a party which controls the state legislature can draw a map which allows them to dominate the state’s congressional delegation. In 2021, for instance, Texas Republicans won 56% of the state’s votes for members of Congress, but ended up controlling 71% of the state’s congressional seats.[2] Both parties gerrymander – Democrats have drawn some extremely dubious maps in Illinois, for example – but the status quo seems to favor Republicans, because of extremely aggressive (and often race-loaded) gerrymandering in the South, and because the two largest Democratic states, California and New York, currently have their maps drawn by independent commissions.
It should also be noted that the Information Age has made gerrymandering more efficient. A lot of information about voters is publicly available and can be sifted by software. What was once a ‘seat-of-the-pants’ process has become highly mechanized.
Gerrymandering is an inherently corrupt practice, because it violates the principle of one person, one vote, but it has been with us since 1812. Why talk about it now? Because of what is happening in Texas.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, redistricting has occurred every ten years, after the national census, which decides how congressional seats are apportioned among the states. Once a decade, we conduct a census, so that shifts in population are honored, and then for the rest of the decade, we avoid changing the rules in the middle of the game. There have been exceptions to this practice, but most have come when a court has thrown out a flagrantly unjust or illegal map. In 2003, in a straightforward power-grab, Tom DeLay and Texas Republicans pushed through a mid-decade redistricting, but that episode left behind quite a stink, and, until now, has not been emulated.
President Trump is worried about the upcoming midterm elections, and with good reason. His “One Big, Beautiful Bill” contained a lot of unpopular provisions, including big tax cuts for the rich, big deficits, and big cuts to Medicaid. Trump’s disapproval ratings are up, and he polls poorly on many issues, including the economy and his signature issue, immigration. Voters are extremely nervous about tariffs, which seem to be dragging down job numbers and raising prices. In addition, a lot of Trump’s voters historically have only voted when he personally was on the ballot. All in all, there is a real prospect in 2026 of what Ted Cruz called an electoral “bloodbath” for the Republicans.
If the Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress, Trump’s life becomes considerably more difficult. Maybe the FBI and the Department of Justice, under his handpicked loyalists, won’t investigate his administration’s suspicious activities, but a congressional committee will. A lot of what’s going on under this administration does not pass the smell test, and congressional investigators will probe where the odors are strongest. Congressional Republicans are too afraid of Trump to rein him in, but Congressional Democrats aren’t. Their constituents want them to resist, and resist they will.
Thus, Trump has every incentive to hold onto the Congress by hook or by crook. What’s happening now in Texas is the “by crook” part.
When Trump was in business, and using his assets to secure loans, he would tell his accountants what he needed his net worth to be, and they would obtain that number for him by assigning imaginary values to his properties. He did business that way for years, and it led to the $489 million civil fraud case he lost in New York.[3] Now he is using the Texas state government the way he once used his accountants. He wants a certain number of congressional seats out of Texas, and he doesn’t care who the people actually vote for. Since the Republican Party does not refuse any of this president’s demands, they are snapping to, and Texas, led by Governor Greg Abbott, is pulling a Tom DeLay, and redistricting in the middle of the decade.
Democrats are fighting back, however. California, the nation’s most populous state, has Democratic super-majorities in the state legislature, and Governor Gavin Newsom has essentially said that however many seats the Republicans grab in Texas will be grabbed back in California. Newsom’s job is more difficult than Abbott’s, because California’s voters would need to vote to amend the state constitution, but if Texas doesn’t back down, the Democrats’ attempt will go forward. At this writing, we don’t know if it will succeed.
If all of this sounds sordid, that’s because it is. If it sounds like it opens up a huge can of worms, that’s because it does. If California counters what Texas is doing, other Republican states (Indiana, Florida, and our own state of Missouri have been mentioned) will probably try to counter what California is doing. Democratic states like New York, Illinois and Maryland will likely respond in kind. The dominoes will fall, and the political arms race escalate.
If mid-decade redistricting becomes normalized, then every time a party captures a state legislature, we can expect the state’s congressional map to be redrawn, and in as partisan a way as possible. Currently, in an attempt to root out gerrymandering, twenty-one states have their maps drawn partially or entirely by independent commissions, but we can expect those commissions to vanish, and America’s version of rotten boroughs to spread like a rash. Everywhere it spreads, members of Congress will become less responsive to the will of the voters. We will function less and less like a democracy, and more and more like a gaggle of partisan juntas.
The real outrage is not that Texas Democrats are getting screwed, although they are. The real outrage is that a deliberate corruption of the electoral process is making the people less and less sovereign. If the voters don’t like what the president does, his party should get slammed in the midterms. If they do like it, his party should benefit. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. For it to work in any other way is vote-rigging. What’s happening in Texas right now is an attempt at vote-rigging.
[1] Carpenter, William. The People's Book; Comprising Their Chartered Rights and Practical Wrongs. W. Strange, 1831.
[2] Astudillo, Carla. "Texas Redistricting Map: How the GOP Could Increase Its Stronghold." Texas Tribune, 21 Aug. 2025, www.texastribune.org/2025/08/18/texas-redistricting-maps-charts-analysis/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.
[3] Sisak, Michael R. "Judge Rules Donald Trump Defrauded Banks and Insurers While Building Real Estate Empire." Associated Press, 26 Sept. 2023, apnews.com/article/donald-trump-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit-1569245a9284427117b8d3ba5da74249. Accessed 21 Aug. 2025.
~ STUDEBAKER (Studebaker@studebakerguy.bsky.com)
