Curious Iowa: Could gerrymandering happen in Iowa?

Texas House Republican lawmakers’ initial passage of new mid-decade congressional maps that aim to pad the party’s majority in Washington, D.C., by creating up to five new winnable GOP seats in Congress — and California Democrats moving to follow suit — has set off a national debate about redistricting and gerrymandering.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance are pushing Republican-led states to redraw their congressional lines to give Republicans an edge in the 2026 midterm elections.

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California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats, following Texas Republicans' redrawn map.

California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly signed the bill into law.

With the buzz surrounding plans to carve up states’ maps in a tit-for-tat redistricting battle, a reader from the Quad Cities asked The Gazette’s Curious Iowa: Could the same happen in Iowa? What’s the likelihood that Iowa lawmakers redraw congressional lines to give Republicans an edge? What’s the process used in Iowa to draw political districts?

Curious Iowa is a series from The Gazette that answers readers’ questions about the state and how it works.

Iowa’s congressional maps aren’t likely to change any time soon, according to experts, political observers and state Republican leaders.

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How does Iowa’s redistricting process compare to other states?

Iowa's redistricting process stands out nationally for its unique, non-partisan approach, said Ed Cook. Cook, now retired, served as legal counsel with the Legislative Services Agency for more than 30 years and was the lead attorney for Iowa’s redistricting process in 2001, 2011 and 2021.

New congressional and legislative districts are drawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts based on the U.S. Census.

Unlike most states, which either use partisan legislatures or independent commissions to draw district maps, Iowa relies on a non-partisan legislative agency — the Legislative Services Agency — to develop its redistricting plans.

LSA creates maps based on objective standards, such as keeping counties and cities whole, ensuring population equality, and maintaining compactness and contiguity, without considering political data or partisan advantage, Cook told The Gazette.

The process is designed to minimize political influence, Cook said. The Legislature can only accept or reject the first two plans without amendment, and only on the third plan can they make changes, But even then, legislators must still meet constitutional and statutory requirements that are designed to ensure fairness and prevent partisan manipulation, Cook said.

For congressional districts, Iowa’s Constitution requires that district boundaries follow county lines. This means entire counties must be kept together within a district, which limits the ability to gerrymander by splitting communities for political gain. Districts also must have nearly equal populations to comply with the “one person, one vote” principle, ensuring each person’s vote has equal weight.

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For legislative districts, two House districts must be nested within each Senate district, further constraining how lines can be drawn. All districts must also be contiguous, meaning all parts of a district must be connected, and compact. By requiring districts to follow county lines and be contiguous and compact, the process limits the ability to manipulate boundaries for partisan gain.

“It would be very, very difficult, and probably even impossible, to try to configure a map that would be a blatant partisan gerrymander in Iowa, given the counties having to be kept whole and the way the population is spread out and that urban and rural divide,” said Donna Hoffman, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Iowa law also prohibits the use of political data — such as addresses of incumbents, party registration and past election results — in drawing the maps. The federal Voting Rights Act as well prohibits racial gerrymandering by preventing districts from being drawn in ways that dilute the voting power of racial or linguistic minority groups.

A temporary redistricting advisory commission holds public hearings and gathers input, adding transparency and public accountability to the process, Cook said.

If lawmakers fails to enact a map — or if a plan is challenged in court and rendered invalid — by the state-mandated deadline, the Iowa Constitution provides that the Iowa Supreme Court is responsible for drawing the final maps.

The legislature has not changed the statutory process since 1980, and the system has been used consistently for every redistricting cycle since then.

As a result, Iowa’s process has been widely regarded as a national model for non-partisan redistricting and has provided “relative assurance that any redistricting presented to the Legislature … is going to be based on basically non-political factors,” Cook said.

Princeton University's Gerrymandering Project's Redistricting Report Card gives Iowa's congressional districts a B grade — defined as “better than average with some bias” — indicating a slight Republican advantage in expected vote share, although the advantage in Iowa’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd districts is slight. However, it says Iowa’s map is highly competitive, while Iowa's House and Senate districts receive an A grade.

What barriers are there to changing Iowa's redistricting process?

The current process, managed by LSA, is widely regarded as a "gold standard" and has strong bipartisan and public support, UNI’s Hoffman said.

Changing this process would likely face significant public and political resistance, Hoffman said, noting there is a long-standing norm in Iowa against mid-decade redistricting and in favor of a nonpartisan process.

Even if the Republican-controlled Iowa Legislature changed the Iowa code to alter LSA's role and statutory requirements, the constitutional requirement to keep counties whole would still make partisan gerrymandering extremely difficult, she said.

“To amend the Constitution in Iowa is not an easy or short thing,” Hoffman said.

Amending the Iowa Constitution is a lengthy and challenging process: it requires approval by two successive General Assemblies (with an election in between) and then a majority vote by the public.

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Curious Iowa: Why can’t Iowans start the process to amend our state constitution?

How does the political landscape in Iowa impact redistricting?

All four of Iowa’s congressional districts are represented by Republicans, providing little immediate incentive for Iowa Republicans to push for redistricting.

However, there is some concern about the 2026 elections, as midterms often result in losses for the President's party, and three of Iowa’s four districts have been targeted by national Democrats for potential gains, Hoffman said.

The ACLU of Iowa, on its website, says it is “always concerned that the Legislature may try to amend redistricting maps in a partisan way.”

Despite these potential risks, there is a strong norm against mid-decade redistricting in Iowa and a widely respected nonpartisan process that has been upheld with bipartisan support and public approval, Hoffman said.

“We celebrate our unbeatable system while other states struggle with redistricting chaos,” Iowa House Republicans posted to Facebook.

The Legislature has only once reached the third map stage (in 1981, when the process was new), and even then they did not amend the map but eventually accepted LSA's rendering. In 2021, the legislature rejected the first plan but accepted the second, maintaining the tradition of nonpartisan redistricting.

“Stranger things have happened, but I would not think at the state level in Iowa you're going to see a special session here, or even in the regular session, things done to change this and then to insert mid-decade redistricting,” Hoffman said. “I'm skeptical of that being something that Iowans would really like, given the support that historically we have seen for this ‘gold standard’ of how we do things.”

Another curious Iowan — from West Union — asked The Gazette: Congress has set the fixed number of 435 voting members for the House of Representatives, and apportioned the number of seats each state received based on population. How then can Texas or California just add five new more U.S. House seats?

Texas is not increasing the size of the House, but redrawing districts to favor Republicans, Hoffmann clarified.

Learn more about Iowa’s redistricting at www.legis.iowa.gov.

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Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com