How Partisan Gerrymandering Enables Corruption

Gerrymandering has enabled legislatures from Ohio to Florida to enrich and empower themselves, all at the expense of the voters they serve. 

Partisan gerrymandering affects more than electoral outcomes—by insulating legislators from accountability, gerrymandering creates the ideal conditions for rampant corruption. When legislators draw maps that inoculate themselves against competitive elections, they face fewer consequences for decisions that are brazenly self-serving and that undermine public oversight. 

The extent of corruption experienced at the hands of gerrymandered legislatures goes beyond private gain. Gerrymandered legislatures often take actions that reduce or reshape the very tools designed to hold them accountable, including state ethics bodies, courts, and direct democracy processes.1 This memo examines these dynamics, using recent examples to show how gerrymandering enables self-interested behavior and weakens safeguards meant to protect the public.

Partisan gerrymandering incentivizes corruption by enabling legislative leaders to wield outsized power.

Partisan gerrymandering occurs when elected officials draw political maps that predetermine electoral outcomes by giving one party an artificial and durable advantage. This practice limits electoral competition because many legislators no longer need broad public support to remain in office; the district lines themselves secure their seats. When representatives are shielded from meaningful voter accountability, incentives shift. Legislators have fewer reasons to respond to constituents and greater freedom to pursue decisions that entrench their own power. This structural insulation is what makes gerrymandering so consequential: gerrymandering does not merely distort representation, it also creates conditions where corruption can take hold, oversight mechanisms can be weakened, and legislative behavior becomes self-interested instead of public-oriented. 

Gerrymandered legislatures are less accountable to voters, and this lack of accountability fundamentally shapes how they interact with institutions designed to check their power. When legislators are protected by safe, noncompetitive districts, they operate with the knowledge that electoral consequences for undermining transparency or ethical standards are minimal. Legislators in gerrymandered majorities have therefore been prone to weaken or sideline oversight structures that would otherwise constrain misconduct, expose conflicts of interest, and enforce basic norms of public integrity—even further insulating themselves from accountability. This often manifests in efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of state courts, restrict or politicize ethics commissions, limit investigatory authority, or reduce the independence of agencies responsible for enforcing standards of conduct. In many cases, these actions occur not in response to specific legal concerns, but as part of a broader strategy to shield legislative majorities from scrutiny and minimize avenues for public accountability. The core pattern is that gerrymandering creates a political environment in which accountability is no longer electorally enforced, allowing legislators to secure additional institutional mechanisms that further insulate them from oversight and consolidate their power. 

When gerrymandering removes electoral consequences, manufactured majorities have repeatedly moved to weaken other remaining avenues through which the public might hold them accountable. The following case studies show how partisan gerrymandering can weaken accountability and invite corruption. 

Ohio’s HB6 scandal shows how gerrymandered legislatures can enable sweeping corruption schemes. 

In 2019, the Ohio legislature enacted House Bill 6, a sweeping energy law that provided a $1 billion bailout to two nuclear plants and several coal facilities while gutting the state’s renewable energy and energy-efficiency standards. The legislation quickly became one of the most controversial bills in state history, driving up utility charges for millions of ratepayers and triggering a fierce backlash from consumer advocates, clean-energy groups, and voters across party lines. 

Federal prosecutors later alleged that the bill’s passage was secured through an elaborate bribery and racketeering scheme in which utility executives secretly funneled tens of millions of dollars to a dark-money group controlled by then-Speaker Larry Householder, who championed the bill. That organization allegedly used the funds to elect supportive lawmakers, pressure wavering legislators, and finance a statewide campaign to block a voter referendum that would have repealed HB6. What began as a technical energy policy dispute thus metastasized into one of the largest public-corruption scandals in Ohio history, ultimately leading to criminal convictions and prison sentences for top legislative leaders.

Speaker Householder had risen to power within a legislature elected under district maps adopted following the 2011 redistricting cycle, which shaped the composition of the Ohio General Assembly that considered HB6 in 2019.2 Those maps included an overwhelming number of safe legislative districts, limiting the electoral consequences legislators might otherwise face for supporting controversial legislation. 

The lack of competition also reduced opportunities for public challenge or internal dissent, which allowed the bill to advance even as questions about its purpose and beneficiaries grew.3 Instead of functioning as a representative body subject to voter oversight, the legislature acted within a structure that protected its members from the consequences of unpopular or unethical decisions. 

The HB6 scheme continued over several years because safe districts ensured that legislators who supported or enabled the bill would face minimal electoral consequences.4 Even as investigations increased and public concern intensified, many lawmakers experienced little pressure to change course or demand transparency.5 When Householder and others were ultimately convicted in federal court, the scandal revealed more than individual misconduct. It highlighted how gerrymandered systems weaken institutional safeguards and lower the cost of unethical behavior. HB6 became a case study in how distorted districts can undermine oversight and permit significant misuse of public power. The outcome demonstrated that corruption becomes far more likely in environments where electoral accountability has been structurally diminished. 

North Carolina’s 2025 mid-decade congressional redraw demonstrates how repeated gerrymanders can misshape political incentives and invite self-interested use of redistricting power.

North Carolina demonstrates how gerrymandering can shape political incentives in ways that invite conduct the public would normally expect competitive elections to discourage. For most of the past decade, the state’s legislative and congressional maps have been severely gerrymandered, with maps drawn by the state legislature struck down by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2019 and 2022 for predetermining partisan outcomes. 

In 2023, however, the ideological balance of the state supreme court shifted and the prior landmark ruling striking down partisan maps was reversed—the court now determining that it would not stand in the way of partisan gerrymanders.6 With that major legal impediment out of the way, legislators were emboldened to gerrymander with impunity. 

When the mid-decade redistricting crisis hit in 2025, then, the North Carolina General Assembly did not hesitate to get on board. The General Assembly redrew the state’s congressional map to dismantle a district that had historically provided representation to Black North Carolinians: the state’s first congressional district, which had remained politically competitive after the legislature’s prior redistricting effort.

Amidst this redraw, reports surfaced alleging that Senate Leader Phil Berger had made a deal involving the adoption of a new redistricting plan for the state’s congressional map in exchange for something of immense personal value to him: an endorsement in a competitive primary election for his senate seat, from sitting President Donald Trump.7 The alleged primary election endorsement would be of particular importance to Leader Berger because, as the Raleigh News & Observer noted, given his safe Republican district, “[a] local primary is the only way that Berger could lose power.”8 Although Leader Berger denied the allegation, a fellow member of the legislature requested a criminal investigation, reflecting the seriousness with which the possibility was viewed within the state.9

This controversy reveals a deeper problem: When redistricting is shaped by personal advantage rather than representation, decisions about who holds power can shift from transparent, voter-driven processes to self-serving behavior that is, itself, self-perpetuating. 

Florida’s gerrymandered legislature gutted the state’s existing ethics oversight apparatus.

Florida offers a concrete example of how a gerrymandered legislature can weaken ethics oversight, increasing the risk of corruption. Although Florida’s Fair Districts Amendments impose constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering, legislative control over the redistricting process has continued to shape political incentives and institutional oversight.10 

For years, partisan maps have given the majority party reliable control of the state House and Senate, even in elections where statewide vote totals were closely divided, setting the stage for the legislature to narrow the authority of the Florida Commission on Ethics, the body responsible for investigating misconduct by public officials.11 In 2024, the legislature set new limits on who could file complaints, shortened windows for considering allegations, and changed procedural rules to make it easier for lawmakers to block or delay reviews of misconduct.12 Legislators also reduced the commission’s independence by giving political actors greater influence over appointments and restricting when and how the commission could initiate investigations on its own.

These changes were adopted despite sustained public concern about transparency and conflicts of interest.13 Because legislators could rely on favorable maps to keep their seats, they faced little electoral pressure to preserve strong oversight. Florida, therefore, shows how gerrymandering and ethics rollbacks can reinforce one another, leaving voters with fewer tools to detect and challenge misconduct and making it more likely that decisions about public resources are shaped by private interests rather than the public good.

Wisconsin’s aggressive partisan power-grab in 2011 created a gerrymandered legislature that took aim at the state’s ethics board, once considered the national model for ethics. 

What happened in Wisconsin after the extreme gerrymandering of 2011 illustrates how map manipulation can enable the systematic weakening of oversight structures at the precise moment they are most needed.

In 2011, following the release of 2010 census data, Wisconsin Republicans, led by then-Governor Scott Walker, drew a vicious partisan gerrymander.14 The state’s legislative maps were so egregious that in the first election under the new maps in 2012, Democratic candidates won a majority of the vote statewide in the state Assembly but Republicans won over 60% percent of the seats.15 Though the maps were initially struck down by a federal three-judge court as extreme partisan gerrymanders that violated the 14th Amendment,16 ultimately the Supreme Court determined that partisan gerrymandering was non-justiciable in federal court,17 meaning federal courts would not be an available avenue for redressing voters’ rights against politically biased maps. After this decision, the only source of relief for Wisconsin voters—and voters across the country—would be through state courts or the legislature itself. 

Analyses of Wisconsin’s maps illuminated how the structural advantages built into the maps would insulate lawmakers from electoral swings that would ordinarily threaten political control of a chamber.18 Even in elections where statewide partisan margins narrowed substantially, analysis showed, the legislative plans would continue to deliver commanding seat majorities to the map-drawing party. The maps would not be responsive to voter sentiment.

Following the passage of these extreme gerrymanders in 2011, the legislature quickly took pains to insulate itself from other kinds of accountability as well. Lawmakers undertook significant changes to the state’s ethics and campaign finance laws, including by dissolving the Government Accountability Board. The Government Accountability Board had previously been widely regarded as one of the most independent and effective election-administration and ethics-enforcement bodies in the country, as it was staffed by retired judges rather than partisan appointees.19 The new legislation replaced it with two commissions that were more directly influenced by legislative leaders.20 Lawmakers also limited investigatory powers, reduced transparency requirements, and rewrote enforcement procedures in ways that made it more difficult to examine allegations of misconduct.21

These changes followed closely on the heels of Wisconsin’s high-profile “John Doe” investigation into alleged coordination between conservative advocacy groups and Governor Walker’s political operation during earlier election cycles.22 The probe examined whether campaign-finance restrictions had been circumvented through undisclosed corporate spending and parallel messaging campaigns. The investigation ultimately collapsed after a series of rulings by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.23 In 2015, a 4–2 conservative majority halted the probe and limited prosecutors’ authority. 

Together, these developments suggested that structural electoral insulation can erode oversight capacity and weaken institutions responsible for detecting and deterring abuses of political power. 

Conclusion: gerrymandering can alter the institutional incentives that shape political accountability. 

The experiences of Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin suggest that the consequences of gerrymandering extend beyond representational fairness. When district boundaries are drawn in ways that insulate legislators from meaningful electoral competition, the pressures that ordinarily discipline political behavior weaken. 

In short, gerrymandering produces a perfect storm for unchecked corruption. Legislators have significant incentives to engage in self-serving behavior to maintain and enhance their unearned power, including but not limited to attacking institutions responsible for upholding norms and protecting fair processes—a systemic corruption that feeds on itself into perpetuity. This kind of warped political landscape requires sustained advocacy, accountability, and outside oversight to reverse such a tailspin.

  1.  For more information on partisan gerrymandering’s role in enabling attacks on direct democracy specifically, see National Redistricting Foundation, How Partisan Gerrymandering Limits Access to Direct Democracy, NRF Policy Lab (Mar. 9, 2026) [https://perma.cc/D2QX-TDMT]. 
    ↩︎
  2.  See Complaint, Ohio A. Philip Randolph Inst. v. Smith, No. 1:18-cv-00357-TSB (S.D. Ohio May 24, 2018) (alleging Ohio’s congressional districts were drawn to secure a durable partisan advantage), [https://perma.cc/N3N5-8E3D].
    ↩︎
  3.  John Funk, Ohio Senate struggles to revise nuclear subsidy bill amid intense political pressure, Utility Dive (June 25, 2019) [https://perma.cc/2R29-T8BU]. 
    ↩︎
  4.  Julie Carr Smyth & John Seewer, Ohio House speaker, 4 others arrested in $60M bribery case, Associated Press (July 21, 2020, 5:36 PM) [https://perma.cc/8G4P-BC8X].
    ↩︎
  5.  Tyler Buchanan, Not a single HB 6 ‘yes’ vote lost their election. Some ‘no’ votes did, Ohio Capital Journal (Nov. 6, 2020, 1:00 AM) [https://perma.cc/4QMR-T7X4]. 
    ↩︎
  6.  Harper v. Hall, 886 S.E.2d 393 (N.C. 2023).
    ↩︎
  7.  See Deana Harley, Senator Berger denies accepting potential Trump endorsement in exchange for redistricting, but says redrawing could happen, CBS 17 (Sept. 26, 2025, 12:03 AM) [https://perma.cc/8A6L-SL8T] (“Berger is expected to accept an endorsement from President Donald Trump in his 2026 primary challenge in exchange for redrawing congressional maps, several sources told CBS 17”).
    ↩︎
  8.  See Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, What to know about the high-stakes NC primary between Phil Berger and Sam Page, The News & Observer (Dec. 12, 2025 2:09 PM) [https://perma.cc/7MUN-FGW8].
    ↩︎
  9.  Letter From Sen. Terence Everitt, 16th Sen. Dist., to Hon. Lorin Freeman, Wake Cnty. Dist. Atty. (Sept 26, 2025) [https://perma.cc/78RW-5ZQZ]. 
    ↩︎
  10.  Fla. Const. Art. III, §§ 20–21; but see Complaint at *3–4, Black Voters Matter v. Lee, Case No. 2022-ca-000666 (Leon Cnty. Cir. Ct., Apr. 22, 2022) [https://perma.cc/N6MX-GCYC] (“The DeSantis Plan does not comply with the Fair Districts Amendment. It does not even purport to. . . The DeSantis Plan also intentionally favors the Republican Party at nearly every turn, eliminating three Democratic seats and transforming competitive seats into Republican-leaning ones. And in so doing, it needlessly produces noncompact districts that split geographic and political boundaries.”).
    ↩︎
  11.  Fla. Const. Art. II, § 8; Fla. Stat. §§ 112.320–21.
    ↩︎
  12. 2024 Florida Chapter 2024-253, Sen. Bill 7014, 2024 Fla. Leg. (2024) [https://perma.cc/BUY4-GBDN]; 
    Skyler Swisher, Florida Bill Could Undermine Corruption Investigations, Governing (Mar. 20, 2024) [https://perma.cc/5RYN-TM6G]. ↩︎
  13.  See, e.g., Palm Beach Post Editorial Board, Editorial: Florida Senate bill restricts ethics probes, opening the door to more public corruption, Palm Beach Post (Feb. 7, 2024, 2:14 PM) [https://perma.cc/M38P-B5UF] (discussing sweeping concerns with bill); Bob Norman, ‘Corrosive’ Florida bill will hide public corruption rather than expose it, ethics expert says, WGCU Fla. Trident (Feb. 2, 2024 at 3:39 PM) [https://perma.cc/C5BW-DX9D] (same).
    ↩︎
  14.  2011 Wisconsin Act 43, Sen. Bill 148, 2011-2012 Wis. Leg. (2011) [https://perma.cc/2N3G-4KTU].
    ↩︎
  15.  Complaint at *1-2, Whitford v. Nichol, No. 3:15-cv-00421-bbc (W.D. Wis., July 8, 2015). 
    ↩︎
  16.  Whitford v. Gill, 218 F. Supp. 3d 837, 910 (W.D. Wis. 2016). On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded the ruling on standing grounds. Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. 48 (2018). The merits of the case were not decided before the U.S. Supreme Court determined, in a case arising from North Carolina, that federal courts could not provide relief for partisan gerrymandering claims arising under the 14th Amendment.
    ↩︎
  17.  Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019).
    ↩︎
  18.  Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos & Eric M. McGhee, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap, 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. 831, 887–90 (2015).
    ↩︎
  19.  Daniel P. Tokaji, America’s Top Model: The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, 3 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 575 (2013). 
    ↩︎
  20.  2015 Wis. Act 118, Assemb. Bill 338, 2015-2016 Wis. Leg. (2015) [https://perma.cc/Q5M5-9G79]; see also Casey Millburg, R.I.P. Wisconsin G.A.B., Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Aug. 23, 2016) [https://perma.cc/49X8-B7DB] (describing significant shortcomings of new commissions).
    ↩︎
  21.  Shawn Johnson, Transparency Advocates At Odds With Wisconsin GOP Over Election Law Changes, Wis. Pub. Radio (Oct. 19, 2015) [https://perma.cc/P3V6-RQV5]. 
    ↩︎
  22.  State Supreme Court Ruling Blocks John Doe Probe, Wisc. Pub. Radio (July 16, 2015) [https://perma.cc/EVL8-QH7Y].
    ↩︎
  23.  State ex rel. Two Unnamed Petitioners v. Peterson, 866 N.W.2d 165 (Wis. 2015).
    ↩︎