Not sure I’d say it’s actually “the best,” but I came across this image again yesterday and it’s a good visual.
And like the other poster said, this only affects representation votes, not statewide elections. Things like governor or president are not affected by gerrymandering directly.
However, people in heavily gerrymandered states may become disillusioned with voting and feel like their vote doesn’t matter, so it can discourage them from voting even when their vote would count.
During the last election I was surprised to find there are a good number of people who genuinely didn’t realize that gerrymandering didn’t affect their vote for president. I did my best to correct it whenever I came across it.
This is basically an issue only if you live in a two-party winner-takes-all country. By redrawing the maps you ensure that in most districts your preferred party wins.
Most countries do not function like this.
It depends on what you’re voting for. The House of representatives is based on your district, not your state as a whole. There are some very oddly shaped districts to take advantage of this.
For anyone that doesn’t understand what gerrymandering is:
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Imagine your favorite soccer team scores however many goals in a season. Now you have the power to reallocate those goals amongst whatever games you want. Instead of losing some games 3-1 and winning some 4-0 you win every single game 2-1, except you lose one game 40-0. Still the same number of goals, but your record is significantly different. Now do this with votes by district.
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Different districts get different voting support. There are areas that the line to vote is very long. Sometimes hours. This isn’t an accident. Some people just don’t have time, capacity, or the effort to spend half of their day voting.
For example: Georgia banned giving water to people waiting in line to make conditions worse.
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CGP Grey has a great video about it.
Let’s say you have 2 districts (A & B) that border each other. And let’s say each district has 100 voters:
A. 90 R & 10 D B. 45 R & 55 DR & D tied. 1 district each.
If R wants to win both, they redraw the line to give district B some of district A’s voters:
A. 70 R & 30 D B. 65 R & 35 DR just won both districts due to gerrymandering
So who redraws them and who gave them the right? And why does it always seem Republicans always wanting to do it?
Because historically, Republicans haven’t concerned themselves with worrying about things like “fairness” and “the will of the people”. Democrats are only really starting to fight back now (not that there hasn’t been gerrymandering in favor of Democrats in the past) because the Republicans have gotten so egregious with it recently.
As for who gave them the right? The Supreme Court decided that redrawing districts for purely partisan, political reasons is apparently A-OK. So now, politicians can choose their voters, rather than voters choosing their representatives.
So who redraws them and who gave them the right?
The states have the right to control the size and shape of their districts and is pretty much always done after the census which occurs every 10 years. The redistricting is supposed to be done to account for changes in population, but as you can see now Republicans pushed for a mid decade redistricting for reasons purely about political power, it has nothing to do with representation of people where the total population has changed.
So who redraws them and who gave them the right?
Who ever is in power at the time unfortunately. California and Texas have both been in the news over redrawing their districts recently to give themselves an advantage. Each side gerrymanders so they won’t agree to abolish it.
And why does it always seem Republicans always wanting to do it?
There’s a bunch of factors but if I had to choose one reason, it boils down to low voter turnout. In the example I gave above, imagine that the 100 voters in each district was less than half of the eligible registered voters in each district.
Gerrymandering doesn’t mean you automatically win, it just means you have an advantage. If a district has a lot of swing voters or higher voter turnout than usual, it can work against the party in power that redrew the lines.
Each side gerrymanders so they won’t agree to abolish it.
It would be very difficult to truly “abolish” gerrymandering because there’s no one objectively fair way to drive lines on a map. Some states have tried to make it more fair by opening proposed maps up to outside nonpartisan bodies for approval (which is why California needed a special ballot measure to even be able to consider their current gerrymandering scheme), but there’s never going to be a perfect way to carve up a map and let everyone in it feel equally represented.
Abolish gerrymandering by abolishing those lines on the map.
This is it. The solution is super easy.
It doesn’t matter for a statewide vote. It matters when electing people for the house of representatives, because those races are NOT statewide.
It matters when the votes are for representatives who represent the voters indirectly.
It works because votes in excess of the winning threshold for each representative are effectively lost, and districts can be redrawn to give one party an unequal share of the excess votes.
