You've probably heard the word tossed around during every election cycle. It sounds like a weird, old-fashioned term—honestly, it sounds like something out of a Dickens novel. But gerrymandering is actually the engine behind how modern American politics functions, or, as some might argue, how it breaks.
It’s essentially the art of drawing map lines to ensure one side wins before a single person even walks into a polling booth. It’s a bit like a sports team getting to decide exactly where the out-of-bounds lines are on the field based on where their best players happen to be standing. Sounds unfair? It kind of is. But it's also perfectly legal in many places, and it’s been happening for over two hundred years.
The term itself actually comes from a guy named Elbridge Gerry. Back in 1812, he was the Governor of Massachusetts and signed off on a redistricting plan that was so ridiculously shaped that one district looked like a mythological salamander. A local newspaper editor combined "Gerry" with "salamander," and well, the name stuck.
How the game is actually played
At its core, gerrymandering is about math and geography. Every ten years, the U.S. Census happens. We count everyone. Then, because people move around, we have to redraw the lines for Congressional and state legislative districts to make sure they have roughly the same number of people. This is called redistricting.
If you’re the party in power during a redistricting year, you have a massive opportunity. You can draw those lines to protect your incumbents or to make it nearly impossible for the other party to win. There are two main ways people do this: "packing" and "cracking."
Packing is exactly what it sounds like. You take as many voters from the opposing party as possible and shove them all into one single district. Sure, they’ll win that district by like 90%, but their influence is "wasted" because they only get one seat.
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Cracking is the opposite. You take a concentrated area of opposing voters—say, a big city that leans one way—and you split them up into five different rural districts. Now, instead of having a strong voice in one area, their vote is diluted. They become a permanent minority in five different places and can't win any of them.
The weird shapes of modern politics
If you look at a map of some U.S. districts, they don't look like squares or circles. They look like Rorschach tests or spilled ink. There was the famous "Praying Mantis" district in Maryland and the "Goofy Kicking Donald Duck" district in Pennsylvania.
These shapes aren't accidents. They are the result of incredibly sophisticated computer software. Nowadays, political consultants use "big data" to look at your voting record, your magazine subscriptions, and even where you buy your groceries to predict how you’ll vote. They can draw a line right down the middle of a street, putting one house in District A and the neighbor in District B, just to optimize the win percentage.
It isn't just a "one side" problem
Usually, when people talk about what gerrymandering means, they want to point fingers. But both major parties have used it effectively. In the 2010s, Republicans were particularly successful with a strategy called REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Project), which focused on winning state legislatures so they could control the map-making process. It worked incredibly well.
On the flip side, Democrats in states like Illinois or Maryland have been criticized for drawing maps that essentially shut out Republican competition. It’s a cycle of retaliation. If one side does it, the other side feels they have to do it just to keep up.
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The "Efficiency Gap" and why it matters
How do we actually prove a map is gerrymandered? It's tougher than you think. You can't just say "it looks weird." Scholars like Nicholas Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee developed something called the "Efficiency Gap."
It measures "wasted votes." A wasted vote is any vote cast for a losing candidate or any vote cast for a winner beyond what they needed to win. If one party has a ton of wasted votes across a whole state, it’s a huge red flag that the map was drawn to suppress their power.
The human cost of a rigged map
When districts are safe, the real election happens in the primary. If a district is 70% Blue or 70% Red, the candidate doesn't have to worry about the general election. They only have to worry about someone from their own party challenging them from the extreme left or extreme right.
This is why politics feels so polarized. Moderate voices get pushed out. Why compromise with the other side if your only threat is a primary challenger who says you aren't "pure" enough? It leads to gridlock. It leads to politicians who are more afraid of their base than they are interested in governing.
Is there a way out?
Some states are trying to fix this by taking the power away from politicians. Places like Michigan, California, and Arizona have moved to Independent Redistricting Commissions.
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Instead of politicians drawing their own lines (which is a massive conflict of interest), they use a group of citizens—usually a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. These commissions are often required to follow rules about keeping "communities of interest" together and making districts compact.
It's not a perfect system, but it usually results in more competitive races. And competitive races generally mean politicians have to actually listen to a broader range of people.
What you can actually do about it
Gerrymandering feels like one of those "big system" problems that you can't touch. But that's not quite true. Redistricting happens at the state level, which means your local vote carries a huge amount of weight.
Keep an eye on your State House. Most people ignore state-level elections, but those are the people who actually hold the pens. If your state allows for ballot initiatives, look for "Fair Map" or redistricting reform petitions.
Demand transparency. Many states have public hearings during the redistricting process. Show up. Or at least send an email. When the process happens in the dark, the salamanders thrive.
Understand your own district. Go to a site like Ballotpedia or The Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Look at how your lines have changed over the last twenty years. If your town is split into three different pieces for no apparent reason, you're likely seeing the effects of cracking.
At the end of the day, the goal of gerrymandering is to make you feel like your vote doesn't matter so you'll stay home. Proving them wrong is the best first step.
Actionable Next Steps
- Check your current district map: Visit your state’s Secretary of State website to see the exact boundaries of your Congressional and state legislative districts.
- Verify your registration: Ensure you are registered at your current address so you are voting in the correct district, especially if lines have recently shifted.
- Support Independent Commissions: Research if your state has a movement for non-partisan redistricting and consider signing petitions that promote map-making transparency.
- Voter Education: Share information about how "packing and cracking" works with friends who feel their vote is "useless" to help them understand the systemic reasons behind the feeling.