The term was originally coined in a political cartoon drawn in 1812. The then Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts helped to enact a law that defined new state senatorial districts. The outline of one of the districts was said to resemble a salamander. Cartoonist Elkanah Tisdale, at the Boston Gazette then drew a picture of a disturbing creature that was divided by and labeled with the state districts. The paper called the creature a “gerry-mander” after the Governor.
The main criticism of gerrymandering is that it subverts the will of the people. It’s a tool that helps politicians get elected and establish a majority in legislatures without getting the majority of the votes. Read more HERE and HERE.
Middle School Students Solve The Issue Of Gerrymandering And Win $10,000 Prize
Kevin Anderton Contributor Science
There are many serious problems facing our country right now such as racism, climate change, and political divide. One problem that has been holding back our political system for a long time (and just about everyone agrees that something needs to be done about it) is gerrymandering. Through gerrymandering, the political party in power is allowed to alter voting district boundaries to help retain their position. This is an ongoing problem in the American political system.
As the subject of their science research project, three middle school students from Niskayuna, New York, decided to take on this serious issue. In their work, Kai Vernooy, James Lian, and Arin Khare devised a way to measure the amount of gerrymandering in each state and created a mathematical algorithm that could draw fair and balanced district boundaries. The results of the project were submitted to Broadcom MASTERS, the nation’s leading middle school STEM competition run by the Society for Science & the Public, where Vernooy, 14, won the Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation and a $10,000 prize. More HERE.
N.C. legislative elections need independent redistricting
By Bryan Warner Common Cause NC 11/15/15
Under North Carolina’s longstanding system, whichever party controls the General Assembly is also in charge of the decennial redistricting process in which the state’s congressional and legislative maps are redrawn. Redistricting has been highly partisan under both Democratic and Republican majorities, leading to districts that stifle competition and diminish the ability of voters to choose their representatives. Read more HERE.
The Atlas Of Redistricting
By Aaron Bycoffe, Ella Koeze, David Wasserman and Julia Wolfe
There’s a lot of complaining about gerrymandering, but what should districts look like? We went back to the drawing board and drew a set of alternative congressional maps for the entire country. Each map has a different goal: One is designed to encourage competitive elections, for example, and another to maximize the number of majority-minority districts. See how changes to district boundaries could radically alter the partisan and racial makeup of the U.S. House — without a single voter moving or switching parties. How we did this » (This is a fascinating map that allows you to see different scenarios. Try it.) Read HERE.
The Mathematicians Who Want to Save Democracy
Carrie Arnold, Nature, June 7, 2017
Gerrymandering has a long and unpopular history in the United States. It is the main reason that the country ranked 55th of 158 nations — last among Western democracies — in a 2017 index of voting fairness run by the Electoral Integrity Project, an academic collaboration between the University of Sydney, Australia, and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although gerrymandering played no part in the tumultuous 2016 presidential election, it seems to have influenced who won seats in the US House of Representatives that year. Read HERE.
Missouri voters dump never-used redistricting reforms
By David A. Lieb | AP November 5, 2020 at 5:22 p.m. EST
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Two years after Missouri voters enacted a first-of-its-kind initiative intended to create “partisan fairness” in voting districts, they have changed their minds. Before the measure could be used, voters reversed key parts of it in Tuesday’s election. They opted instead to return to a method that will let commissions composed of Democratic and Republican loyalists redraw state legislative districts after census results are released. Read HERE.
Va. lawmakers pass redistricting commission rules, end extraordinary session
By Gregory S. Schneider and Laura Vozzella November 9, 2020 at 6:23 p.m. EST
Both the House of Delegates and the state Senate agreed to language in the two-year, $135 billion spending plan to set up a bipartisan commission on redistricting under a constitutional amendment approved last week by voters.
That language held up final passage of the budget last month. Many House Democrats opposed the redistricting amendment, saying it didn’t do enough to ensure minority participation in drawing political boundaries. Senate Democrats — and most Republicans — supported it as a way to end gerrymandering. Read HERE.
Democrats had a decade to consolidate power. They blew their chance.
State legislatures are key to congressional redistricting. This year, none flipped to Democratic control.
By Reid Wilson November 6, 2020 at 8:06 a.m. EST
Leading up to Election Day, Democrats touted their chances of winning back key seats in Republican-held state legislatures around the country. Recapturing territory in states such as Texas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania could help the party lock in political power for a decade. If Democrats achieved this in enough districts, they could have averted their fate after the 2010 tea party wave.
“Democrats didn’t focus on those state legislative races to the extent that we should have in 2010,” former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., who heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said last week during a Washington Post Live event. “As a result, the 2011 redistricting went well for the Republicans and led to the gerrymandering that we have seen, and that has affected our politics over the course of this last decade. I think Democrats are focusing now on state-level races.”
This week, they blew it. Instead of cementing congressional control for a decade, Democrats’ majority is now at future risk. Read HERE.