This year, in AP Human Geography, my friends and I played an online simulation called the “ReDistricting Game”. With quip-py titles like “Mark Etz”, “Otto Werker”, and “Geri Atrix”, what was not to love? But as I soon realized, gerrymandering had a much deeper meaning beyond me struggling to move tiny squares a few pixels to the right.
Gerrymandering is defined as a political practice used to sway an election in a certain party’s favor by redrawing district lines. Confused? I was too. When I was little, I used to play Mancala with my older sister; and unfortunately for her, I always won. Years later, she realized that she didn’t just suck at the game (although this was still true). My mom told her that when she wasn’t looking, I would move the marbles into slots that benefitted me. Somehow, I was able to pull this off right in front of her. Similarly, politicians and political elites group certain demographics or incomes together in a district, so they appeal to more voters. They’re often able to do this without a public outcry, up until recent years.
Basic logic would suggest that a county would encompass one district. But, Morris County itself is broken into two congressional districts, CD 11 and CD 7, and six legislative districts, Districts 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 40. This is because in the 1962 Baker vs. Carr trial, the Supreme Court ruled that every congressional and legislative district needed to have an equal population to be considered “fair”. Obviously, a problem would arise here, as state legislatures, who are in charge of drawing districts, don’t just simply map unbiased boundaries.
Two of the most common gerrymandering practices are “packing” and “cracking”. According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, packing voters involves concentrating an opposition party’s stronghold into a few districts. This reduces their prowess and further silences a minority. On the other hand, cracking involves spreading voters across many districts, so the voting bloc would dissolve. This way, the voters are fragmented across many locations and cannot band together as a majority, too small to become a majority. Both of these tactics magnify the voice of the party’s supporters while silencing any naysayers.
Credit: Urban Milwaukee, "US Supreme Court Wrong on Redistricting?"
As seen in this picture, even if a state’s political status favors a certain party over another, district boundaries can completely change the outcome of an election.
Credit: Wikipedia, "Gerrymandering in the United States"
This is Illinois’ CD 4. This geographic area received the nickname, “The Earmuffs” and was used to pack the state’s Hispanic population into one district. Notably, this district also encompasses some of I-294. This may simply look like a green blip on your screen, but large masses of people live along the highway and can decidedly swing a local or federal election.
Personally, I think it’s disgusting that such a significant part of elections is based on a few middle-aged bureaucrats cherrypicking the voters they know will favor them. Because of gerrymandering, political leaders can control an entire state even though their voter support base makes up less than half of the state’s true population. Unpopular legislation often gets passed, undermining the US sentiment of proportional representation. If little Sriya had known that her government was this corrupt, she would have continued to cheat at Mancala to this day.
States like California and Arizona have taken steps against this by putting independent commissions in charge of district boundaries, rather than a specific party. While this a great first step, we need to do much more to combat majoritarianism. Often, communities of color like African-Americans, etc. have very few representatives advocating their rights on a federal level. Rather than packing districts, these committees should assign boundaries in a way that allows these POC groups to have greater representation in our government. If this doesn’t happen, Kanye West is soon going to be the only voice of the black community, and I’d rather not have someone who sells dad shoes be the foremost authority in our country.
With all this being said, I hope I can count on you all to endorse my state legislature race in 2040. I promise to not divvy up the map into winter accessories.
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