Navigation
Explores the relationship between geography and voting, focusing on how boundaries affect democratic outcomes.
What if a politician could choose their voters instead of the voters choosing the politician? In the world of electoral geography, the stroke of a pen can be more powerful than a million ballots.
Every ten years, the United States conducts a Census to count every resident. This data triggers Apportionment, where the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the 50 states based on population. Once a state knows how many seats it has, it must engage in Redistricting: redrawing the internal map to ensure each district has roughly the same number of people. The goal is Equal Representation, ensuring that one person's vote in a rural area carries the same weight as a vote in a dense city. However, because the power to draw these lines often rests with state legislatures, the process frequently shifts from a civic duty to a strategic political game.
Quick Check
Why must district boundaries be redrawn every ten years rather than staying permanent?
Answer
To account for population shifts and ensure that each district maintains an approximately equal number of constituents, upholding the principle of 'one person, one vote.'
Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating district boundaries to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group. The term originated in 1812 when Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill creating a district that looked like a salamander. To achieve this advantage, mapmakers use two primary spatial strategies: Packing and Cracking. By carefully placing lines, a party can win a majority of seats even if they do not win a majority of the total popular vote. This turns geography into a tool for partisan entrenchment, making some districts 'safe' for one party and nearly impossible for the other to win.
Imagine a state with 50 voters: 20 Blue and 30 Red, divided into 5 districts (10 voters each). 1. Packing: You put 9 Blue voters into a single district. They win that one seat easily, but their remaining 11 voters are spread so thin they can't win any other seats. You have 'packed' the opposition to waste their surplus votes. 2. Cracking: You spread the 20 Blue voters across all 5 districts (4 per district). Since they are outnumbered by Red voters (6 per district) in every single area, they win zero seats. You have 'cracked' their influence.
Quick Check
If a mapmaker puts as many opposition voters as possible into one single district, which technique are they using?
Answer
Packing.
How do we prove a map is gerrymandered? Political scientists use the Efficiency Gap () to measure partisan bias. This metric counts Wasted Votes: any vote cast for a losing candidate, or any vote cast for a winning candidate beyond what was needed to win (50% + 1). If one party has significantly more wasted votes than the other, the map is considered inefficient and likely biased. In a perfectly fair system, the would be close to zero. When the is high, it suggests that the spatial arrangement of the districts is intentionally diluting the power of a specific group of voters, leading to a 'democracy deficit' where the legislature does not reflect the will of the people.
Which process occurs first in the 10-year cycle of electoral geography?
If a party wins 60% of the seats with only 45% of the total vote, what is the most likely cause?
In the context of the Efficiency Gap, a 'wasted vote' includes votes cast for a winning candidate that exceed the 50% + 1 threshold.
Review Tomorrow
In 24 hours, try to explain the difference between 'cracking' and 'packing' to a friend without looking at your notes.
Practice Activity
Look up your own state's congressional district map. Do the shapes look compact and logical, or do they look like 'salamanders'?