Here's my attempt at a neutral look at Prop 50, which people in California can vote on Tuesday (Nov 4th). The bill seems like a case-study in high-stakes game theory and when to cooperate or defect.

The bill would allow the CA legislature to re-write the congressional district maps until 2030 (when district-drawing would go back to normal). Currently, the district maps are drawn by an independent body designed to be politically neutral. In essence, this would allow the CA legislature to gerrymander California. That would probably give Democrats an extra 3-5 seats in Congress. It seems like there's a ~17% chance that it swings the House in the midterms.

Gerrymandering is generally agreed to be a bad thing, since it means elections are determined on the margin more by the map makers and less by the people. The proponents of this bill don't seem to think otherwise. They argue the bill is in response to Texas passing a similar bill to redistrict in a way that is predicted to give Republicans 5 new house seats (not to mention similar bills in North Carolina and Missouri that would give republicans an additional 2 seats).

Trump specifically urged Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri to pass their bills, and the rationale was straightforwardly to give Republicans a greater chance at winning the midterms. For example, Rep. Todd Hunter, the author of Texas's redistricting bill, said "The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward, [to] improve Republican political performance".

Notably some Republicans have also tried to argue that the Texas bill is in response to Democrats gerrymandering and obstructionism, but this doesn't match how Trump seems to have described the rationale originally.^[1]

The opponents of Prop 50 don't seem to challenge the notion that the Republican redistricting was bad.^[2] They just argue that gerrymandering is bad for all the standard reasons.

So, it's an iterated prisoners' dilemma! Gerrymandering is bad, but the Republicans did it, maybe the Democrats should do it to (1) preserve political balance and (2) punish/disincentivize Republicans' uncooperative behavior.

Some questions you might have:

Will this actually disincentivize gerrymandering? Maybe the better way to disincentivize it is to set a good example.

Generally I'm skeptical of arguments like "the other guys defect in this prisoners' dilemma and so you should too". In practice, it's often hard to tell why someone is defecting or for the counterparty to credibly signal that they would in fact switch to the cooperate-cooperate equilibrium if it was available. Real life is messy, it's easy to defect and blame it on your counterparty defecting even when they didn't, and being the kind of person who will legibly reliably cooperate when it counts is very valuable. For these reasons I tend to err towards being cooperative in practice.

In this case, if CA passes Prop 50, maybe republican voters won't see it as a consequence of Republican gerrymandering and will simply interpret it as "the Democrats gerrymander and go whatever uncooperative behavior gets them the most votes. We need to do whatever it takes to win" or "everyone gerrymanders, gerrymandering is normal and just part and parcel of how the sausage is made".

On top of that, I'm wary of ending up in one of the defect-defect equilibria tit-for-tat is famous for. Tit-for-two-tats and forgiveness are sometimes helpful.

But I think Prop 50 handles these things fairly well. The bill only lasts until 2030 and has been framed explicitly and clearly as in direct response to redistricting in Texas. (In fact Governor Newsom's original proposal was to make Prop 50 "Preserves California’s current congressional maps if Texas or other states also keep their original maps." That provision was removed once Texas solidified its redistricting.) Fretting too much about if Republicans will take even more aggressive actions because of this bill also incentives Republicans to be more aggressive in their responses and to pay less attention to Democrats' rationales, which seems bad.

Moreover, if Democrats are benefiting similarly to Republicans from gerrymandering, perhaps this creates more bipartisan support for federal regulation banning gerrymandering. In general, where possible, I think it's good to have laws preventing this kind of uncooperative behavior rather than relying on both parties managing to hit cooperate in a complicated prisoner's dilemma.

Are the costs to society simply too large to be worth it?

In some ways, Prop 50 undoes some of the damage of redistricting in Texas: in Texas republicans gained 5 seats in a way that isn't as representative as it should have been, so by undoing that and giving Democrats 3-5 extra seats, the system becomes more representative. But in some ways two wrongs don't make a right here: at the end of the day both Texans and California end up less representative. For instance, if you think it's more important for congress being made up of politicians who represent their constituents well and less important that constituents' views are represented federally.

Notably even if you buy that argument you might still think Prop 50 is worth it if you think the punishing effects are worth it.

What's the historical context? If this is a prisoner's dilemma, how much has each side hit cooperate in the past?

Republicans have sometimes said their redistricting bills are a response to Democrats' gerrymandering. If so, maybe they're justified. Let's look into it! You can read the history here or look at an interactive map here.

It seems like Republicans engaged in a major, unprovoked bout of gerrymandering in 2010 with REDMAP. Since then both parties have tried to gerrymander and occasionally succeeded. Overall, Republicans have gerrymandered somewhat more than Democrats, but Democrats have still engaged in blatant gerrymandering, for example, in Illinois in 2021. In searching for more right-leaning narratives, I found that Brookings estimated in 2023 that no party majorly benefited from gerrymandering more than another at the time, regardless of how much they'd engaged in it. I haven't really found a great source for anyone claiming Democrats have overall benefited more from gerrymandering.

Democrats have also tried to propose a bill to ban gerrymandering federally, the Freedom to Vote Act. (This bill also included some other provisions apart from just banning gerrymandering, like expanding voter registration and making Election Day a federal holiday.) The Freedom to Vote Act was widely opposed by Republicans and I don't know of any similar legislation they've proposed to ban gerrymandering.

So overall, it seems like Republicans have been engaging in more gerrymandering than Democrats and been doing less to fix the issue.

1. ^{^}

   Republicans have also argued the new districts in Texas represent the Hispanic population better, though they tend to frame this more as a reason it's good and less as the reason they pursued this redistricting in the first place.

2. ^{^}

   Specifically, they say "While Newsom and CA Democrats say Prop 50 is a response to Trump and Texas redistricting, California shouldn't retaliate and sacrifice its integrity by ending fair elections."