You might have heard the term "gerrymandering" being thrown around on the news in recent years. The topic has had growing importance in politics as some people have noticed Republicans have had an unfairly easy time in controlling the House of Representatives. In fact, an incredible amount of districts are super gerrymandered, as shown below.
But how does gerrymandering happen? Well, since the task of drawing up a state's congressional districts usually falls to a state's legislature, when a certain party controls the state legislature, they are often prone to drawing the district lines in order to give their party the most districts. One drastic example of this is North Carolina, which has undergone extreme redistricting based on which party controls the state legislature and therefore makes the congressional map.
While both parties gerrymander, with Democrats actually making the trend popular in the lates 1990s by gerrymandering Southern districts to keep their control of the South as Republicanism swept through the South. However, in recent years, Republicans have been more known to gerrymander, with the Republican strongholds of North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, and Ohio all only being so strong due to Republican state legislature manipulation. There are actually far more Democratic votes cast in these elections that are represented in the House.
To be fair, Democrats gerrymander as well, with the states of Maryland and California (yes, even California) being gerrymandered to give an advantage to Democratic candidates.
For those concerned about this pressing issue that turns our representation into some sort of manipulation puzzle game for state legislature majority parties, there is hope. In the past year, outraged Democrats in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and Republicans in Maryland have filed cases citing gerrymandering as illegal manipulation of voter representation. Well, these cases have been very controversial, with some even reaching the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked pleas to change the North Carolina map, but chose not to block a similar case out of Pennsylvania, allowing the districts to be redrawn.
Clearly, gerrymandering is a complex issue that will not be easily solved. However, with newly gained attention and court cases that have or may reach the Supreme Court, people remain hopeful that something will be done about this immoral process which has infiltrated our democracy.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/gerrymandering
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.10ffa40ae19a
https://rantt.com/the-top-10-most-gerrymandered-states-in-america/
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/ongoing-partisan-gerrymandering-cases
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