Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The modern GOP is engineering its own 21st-century version of the 3/5 Compromise—not by counting people as fractions, but by slicing up their political power to fractions through gerrymandering. For decades, redistricting has been a tool both parties have used, but the Republican Party has refined it into a surgical weapon for minority rule. In states they control, GOP governors and legislatures are redrawing districts not just every ten years following the census, but opportunistically mid-decade, whenever they see a political advantage. They claim it’s perfectly legal, exploiting loopholes and judicial leeway, while openly ignoring the principle of fair representation.

This manipulation echoes the spirit of the 3/5 Compromise, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person to pad Southern states’ political clout without granting those individuals any actual power. Today, Republican lawmakers accomplish a similar feat by diluting the voting strength of urban, diverse, and often Democratic populations. Through cracked and packed districts, a heavily Black or Latino city might be carved into several majority-white rural districts or stuffed into one district to waste excess Democratic votes. Voters are counted—sure—but their influence is defanged.

What’s more galling is the double standard. When Republican-led states like Alabama, Florida, or Texas redraw maps mid-decade, the party defends it as strategic governance. But when Democratic governors like in New York or Illinois even consider similar redistricting to balance out gerrymandered Republican gains, the GOP erupts in outrage. They cry foul about constitutional violations and claim their “fair-minded” voters—code for white conservatives—are being silenced.

It’s not about legality; it’s about control. The GOP knows its national platform is increasingly unpopular with young people, people of color, and urban voters. So instead of adapting policy, they rig the system. This asymmetric warfare isn’t just hypocritical—it’s corrosive to democracy. While the original 3/5 Compromise was born of an America still shackled by slavery, today’s redistricting games serve a similar purpose: inflating the power of a privileged minority at the expense of the majority. Gerrymandering, especially when done with racial and partisan intent, turns voters into fractions again. And no matter how loudly they shout “legal,” what the GOP is doing is ethically bankrupt and a threat to representative democracy.