individual. reporter: look at the map that texas republican legislature passed after the 2020 census. even the untrained political eye can see how jumbled and jagged the new house districts will be. when you look at the new texas map after redistricting, what does it look like to you? well, to me, the new map is it s incumbent protection. the red seats got redder and blue seats got bluer. reporter: professor david lublin. it feels more and more like the representatives are choosing their constituents rather than vice versa. i here that said often but at the end of the day, the voting still occurs by the population that goes and votes. but if you decide that the population that s going to vote for you are like-minded people they re communities of interest. communities of interest isn t just code for keeping republicans with republicans and democrats with democrats?
how long can people enjoy having difficulty in getting good work done? reporter: since the 2010 census, texas has gained nearly four million new people and will get two new congressional seats, a big democratic criticism of the new texas gop-drawn map is that 95% of the new population is minority, and the two new seats were drawn for republicans. growth in this country and especially in this area is not anglo. it is a mixture of minorities. and that should be reflected in the representation. and it is not. reporter: texas democrat eddie bernice johnson is retiring after 30 years in the house and says the gerrymandering is hardly new, it s become more extreme. when these lines start being drawn with the help of computers, where they can be so exact that they can break up a bedroom if they wanted to. it is hurting our nation.
reporter: kimball brace has one of those computer programs. this is showing you a concentration of where the trump vote was being cast. reporter: he s hired by states across the country to draw their maps and showed us just how advanced the technology is now. by the time you get down to the census bloc level, you can end up getting exact populations for any given piece of geography. reporter: to be sure gerrymandering is happening in state houses all across the country, including those with democrats in charge. maryland republican delegate kathy shulaga. this makes no sense. look at this district that wraps around there. reporter: she s advocating a nonpartisan approach. this is the citizens redistricting commission, a nonpartisan commission. a fifth grader can look at these two maps next to each other and
republicans and democrats want to be represented by democrats. reporter: the fact that there are so many more safe seats, republican and democrat in congress, does that make things more partisan here? it makes things to where the person who represents those district more hardened in their brief. reporter: texas democrat sheila jackson lee says when she first came to congress three decades ago, the first legislation she worked on was bipartisan. we didn t know any better. we thought we had to work together. and even though there might have been one or two who would make those speeches on the floor of the house that everyone would look up, the majority felt that our work was to work together. i think we have an obligation that we should not let redistricting change america. reporter: has it? i think it has.
see what looks fair and what looks like it was created with partisan purposes. this is our historic house chamber. reporter: cnn reached out to maryland state democrats in leadership and on the redistricting committee. none of them agreed to an interview. when you let politicians draw their own maps, be they republican or democrat, they re going to hold on to their power, creating partisan representation isn t good for citizens. you know, most people are not on the far left or the far right. most people reside somewhere in the middle on most issues. reporter: in his upcoming book, american reboot, will hurd writes about the importance of appealing to those in the middle, not on the edges. my title was representative. that means i represent everybody. people that voted for me, people that didn t vote for me, and people that didn t vote at all. reporter: because you were in a swing district, your incentive was to work across the aisle? absolutely. reporter: congressional