Gerrymandering can be defined as the redrawing of congressional districts to ensure that one political party remains in control of the majority of seats appointed in the House of Representatives. The redrawing of districts occurs every ten years and is usually done by the political party whom it will benefit. Redrawing districts is done by both the Democratic and Republican political parties and can easily benefit and disadvantage either as well. There has been much debate over the subject, but in March of 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that gerrymandering is a political issue that should be resolved by the elected state government and not a legal issue in need of the federal courts.
The use of gerrymandering received its name after Elbridge Gerry, the Governor for the state of Massachusetts from 1810 through 1812. In 1812 he approved a bill in order to benefit his own political affiliations that allowed the redrawing of districts. A popular newspaper saw that one of the districts was shaped similarly to a salamander, and thus, the name gerrymander was created. This practice would grow and continue to make an impact on the result of elections even to this day.
There are two strategies that can be used to gerrymander: they are known as the packing and cracking of districts.
Packing is when the voters of the opposing party are put into the least amount of districts as possible or in extreme cases all into one district. The logic behind this is that if the opposing party is the majority of voters and they are all put inside one district but the rest of the districts belong to the other party then one party will always remain outnumbered in the amount of districts they control (not in the number of total voters). This usually requires that the political party being packed into a single district is the majority of the total number of voters in that state in order for a smaller number of voters to hold more seats and influence.
On the flipside, the cracking of districts usually occurs when voters are split in a strategic manner that splits them up into several districts and does not allow them to be majority in any districts. They will not have any seats since they are not the majority of voters that make up those districts. An easier way to think about cracking is that the voters are split into several districts to prevent them from gaining a district.
A relevant example that many Chicago residents may already be aware of is the oddly shaped fourth congressional district of Illinois. This district is two separate areas of the city united by a narrow strip that runs through a highway but not the area surrounding it.
With midterm elections approaching in November of this year and new state congressional maps being finalized, the topic is almost guaranteed to come up during a conversation. Whichever political party is in control of a district will most likely have a representative of that same political party elected. This becomes important when seeing which political party ends up controlling the majority of seats in the House of Representatives. The Democrats are currently the majority in the House of Representatives as of right now with 220 representatives. The House of Representatives has many unique powers such as electing the President if the Electoral College were to tie, and impeaching federal officials. It is for all these reasons that the redrawing of districts may alarm people because the outcome of the new districts will have an effect on several things.
By Elidia Magaña
Sources:
Wines, Michael. “What Is Gerrymandering? and How Does It Work?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 June 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/gerrymander-explainer.html.
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