When the Supreme Court removed the last federal guardrail on gerrymandering in Louisiana v. Callais, it set up a dangerous experiment for the 2026 midterms: What happens to American democracy when political mapmakers face no federal constraints? In Callais, the Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act while handing states a license to invoke partisanship to dismantle majority-minority districts. By treating gerrymandering as a benign and standard feature of self-governance, the Court contradicted Rucho v. Common Cause, which branded the practice “incompatible with democracy” despite deeming it non-justiciable. 

Before and after Callais, commentators braced for a nationwide escalation in gerrymandering. While Texas and California had already engaged in retaliatory partisan line-drawing, Callais emboldened states like Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida to use their newfound autonomy to lock in partisan gains. Ultimately, however, the worst-case scenarios have not yet materialized. Even in jurisdictions where new maps were enacted, lawmakers refrained from maximizing their partisan advantage, and efforts elsewhere ran out of time or stalled in the face of legislative resistance or court obstacles. Nevertheless, these isolated pre-midterm skirmishes likely represent just the prelude to a full-scale gerrymandering war. 

What would a gerrymandering war look like? In the worst-case scenario, it could involve states drawing maps designed to secure all the seats in a congressional delegation for one of the parties. Modelers have identified ways this could be done in large states like California and Texas, suggesting that something like that is possible in all the states. Of course, there are state constitutional constraints in some states, but if a gerrymandering war were to occur, politicians and voters might succumb to the pressure to repeal those constraints as they have in California and Virginia thus far. 

What would a gerrymandering war mean for democracy? For the most part, observers focused on the partisan implications at the national level have suggested it might be much ado about nothing. Following from the idea that partisan gerrymandering is self-limiting, these observers have predicted that even if states collectively engage in the most extreme forms of gerrymandering, a partisan stalemate will likely result. Assuming that to be the case, there are still other significant democratic costs that have received less attention. While a gerrymandering war might yield a partisan stalemate, minority representation remains uniquely vulnerable. The most immediate threat to minority representation lies in the South, where Republican-controlled state legislatures could eliminate most or all the remaining majority-minority districts. In a region of deeply racially polarized voting, the dismantling of these districts would likely reduce minority officeholding to a fraction of its number. 

But even these accounts fall short of identifying the true extent of the democratic costs from a gerrymandering war, two of which should not be ignored. First, the impact of a gerrymandering war on minority officeholding would extend far beyond the South. A recent survey suggests that Democrats, the traditional supporters of majority-minority districts, would trade away these districts if it gave their party the opportunity to better combat Republican gerrymandering. The two parties seeking to advance their own partisan gain would therefore both have incentives to spread minority voters out such that most would be placed in majority-white districts. 

Although voting is not as racially polarized in regions outside the South, minority candidates would still have a difficult time winning elections in majority-white districts, even those that lean Democratic. Democratic primary voters and party leaders tend to perceive minority candidates as less electable than white candidates in majority-white districts. This perception has greater influence on electoral choices in contexts of extreme gerrymandering, where the partisan advantage is narrowed in any given district. Compounding this challenge, empirical research demonstrates that implicit biases and ideological stereotyping shape voters’ candidate evaluations, often leading white voters to favor white candidates. Finally, minority candidates face structural resource disparities that penalize their campaigns. Without the built-in demographic advantages of majority-minority districts to offset their lack of seed capital and elite donor networks, minority candidates face a steeper climb to electoral viability. 

Second, fewer minority officeholders and fewer viable minority campaigns invite an even greater threat to American democracy: the systemic retrenchment of minority voters. Nearly forty years ago, political scientists established a direct correlation between Black representation and minority voter participation. “Black empowerment,” political scientists Lawrence Bobo and Frank Gilliam explained, “is a contextual cue of likely policy responsiveness that encourages blacks to feel that participation has intrinsic value.” This empowerment follows a predictable life cycle. Turnout surges during early, barrier-breaking campaigns, but diminishes slightly over time as the election of minority candidates becomes more routine, less competitive, or the jurisdiction becomes sufficiently saturated with black elected officials. Subsequent research reinforced these early theories by establishing a clear causal relationship in which black officeholding drives political participation, not the reverse. 

If representation drives participation, the 2026 midterms could trigger a new era for American democracy: a life cycle of minority disempowerment. For now, the indicators of Black empowerment remain favorable. This election cycle features a historic surge of Black candidates across the ballot, including a record number of major party gubernatorial nominees. This candidate influx, combined with intense backlash to the Supreme Court’s evisceration of Section 2, has lifted Black voter enthusiasm to levels not seen since the Obama years. 

Yet these historic milestones mask a growing structural threat of disempowerment. In jurisdictions that eliminated majority-minority districts following the Callais decision, the electoral math has fundamentally shifted. Even with a marked increase in Black voter enthusiasm, Black incumbents are either retiring or projected to lose to white Republican challengers. If these projections hold, Republican-controlled legislatures will have established a proven roadmap for dismantling majority-Black districts and securing partisan gains. Witnessing the systematic defeat of Black incumbents in these redrawn districts, future minority candidates will be disincentivized from running. The damage would extend far beyond Congress and state legislatures. By erasing these electoral stepping-stones, the new maps would choke off the pipeline for future statewide leadership for African Americans. 

If Democrats respond in kind, trading away majority-minority districts for partisan advantages as a survey suggests they might be willing to do, the cumulative impact on minority representation would be severe. With many fewer viable Black candidates running and winning elected offices nationwide, a steep and lasting decline in Black voter turnout could be triggered. The resulting drop in Black voter participation could easily eclipse any suppressive impact of strict Voter ID laws and widen the Black-White voter participation gap to levels not seen since before the enactment of the VRA in 1965. 

There are ways to combat this disempowerment life cycle, but it requires a congressional will to promote democracy that has been absent since the reauthorization of the VRA in 2006. It also demands innovating away from the race-conscious means for securing minority representation that was at the core of prior voting rights efforts. Studies demonstrate that minority representation can be secured through race-neutral proportional representation mechanisms, alternative voting systems, or a hybrid of both. Such reforms require a significant departure from America’s deeply entrenched single-member, winner-take-all framework. Yet, as we look past the 2026 midterms, embracing them might be necessary to preserve our multiracial democracy.