Gerrymandering, or How to Rig a Political System
Maps can be either empowering or a tool of control, as cartographer Sébastien Caquard said in a 2014 interview for Open Canada. It all depends on if you are the mapper or the one being mapped. While we tend to see maps as something objective because they are essentially images that portray scientific knowledge, there are various ways that maps can manipulate not only us as individuals but the society we live in as a whole.
There are many examples of such manipulations, like the Crimean border between Ukraine and Russia that appears differently depending on what country you open Google Maps from. But there are cases of manipulation through mapmaking in the Western world, as well. One very common example of manipulation that is at the heart of the US political system, but is not often talked about, is gerrymandering.
What is Gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering is the practice of dividing election districts in such a way that it favors one political party during the elections. In most states, it is the state legislatures that draw these voting districts to give an advantage to their own party. It is often referred to as politicians choosing their voters and not the other way around. In recent years, it has also been criticized for giving an unfair advantage to whoever is in charge at the time of drawing up the US district maps.
History of the word
The word gerrymandering has a very interesting origin. In 1810, the new governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, started his term. His party, the Democratic-Republicans, were responsible for redrawing the state’s Senate district maps. Since they wanted to weaken the other party, the Federalists, they redrew the districts in a very odd way.
According to Vox, this new map they created was made fun of in the media, and one district was especially singled out. This district had such an unusual shape that people compared it to a salamander. It was then combined with the governor’s last name, Gerry, and the word gerrymander was born.
Dividing the districts
Every ten years each US state has to divide its population evenly across districts when redrawing the maps. Because each district in a state is responsible for electing its own representative in the House of Representatives, redistricting can come in very handy for the party in power. Mapmakers have a few options when it comes to how they can draw the district maps. These visuals from The Washington Post help understand better:
Packing and cracking
The last illustration represents the way gerrymandering essentially works. Mapmakers are tasked with doing two things: packing and cracking districts. Packing is done when a large number of the opposing party’s voters are all put into the same district, decreasing the worth of their votes. The other technique used is cracking, which separates big areas into districts that each have a slightly larger number of voters of the favored party, outnumbering the opposing party’s voters. Both of these methods give an advantage to the party that drew the maps when elections come around.
According to the New York Times, partisan gerrymandering is most noticeable in Republican states, such as Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina.
However, Democrats can also use gerrymandering to their advantage in states such as Illinois and Maryland.
In 2019, the US Supreme Court ruled that it is up to the individual states to decide on the question of partisan gerrymandering and how fair it is to the opposing party. In order to take a step away from using mapping as a political tool, some states have gone for the option of hiring independent nonpartisan commissions to make the redistricting decisions. However, these commissions can be appointed by the politicians in power in the particular state, which makes the redistricting biased again.
Racial gerrymandering
Another issue that arises from gerrymandering is racial gerrymandering. It is commonly used to spread out minority voters throughout a state’s districts so they can’t elect a representative of their own choosing. This was tackled by the federal government with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned decreasing the power of minority voters by redistricting them, as mentioned by Vox. Gerrymandering can also be used to the advantage of minority groups by grouping the members of a minority together and making them a majority in a particular district, thus helping them to choose the representative they prefer.
Prospects
While racial gerrymandering has become less common in the past decades, partisan gerrymandering still has a huge influence over election results all over the United States. Despite the landslide win in the 2020 presidential elections, in the congressional elections, the Democratic party barely managed to win the race for the House of Representatives even though they held the majority of the votes. This is a result of the 2011 remapping of the voting districts, which gave an advantage to the Republicans. And with the newer and more advanced technology these days, remapping will only become more precise, yet again leading to a bigger advantage for the favored party.
Mihaela Miteva is a Journalism and Mass Communication student at the American University in Bulgaria. She followed the 2020 US elections closely and finds the United States political system amusing.
