So what is gerrymandering? The term comes from an 1812 editorial cartoon criticizing a Massachusetts redistricting map, according to the National Archives. The new districts, under Gov. Elbridge Gerry, gave political advantage to Gerry’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, over the Federalists. One of the districts in particular was said to look like a salamander, so a cartoonist for the Boston Gazette redrew the district to look like a creature and labeled it “the Gerry-mander.”
As the Encyclopedia Britannica defines it: “in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering).”
Gerrymandering has been a problem since America’s earliest years as a nation, and the fight over unfair redistricting has been long and brutal. In the 1960s, a series of Supreme Court decisions affirmed that electoral districts must be appropriately balanced based on population, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the 1980s, the high court determined gerrymandering based on race to be unconstitutional, as it violates the Voting Rights Act. But according to the New York Times, the Supreme Court has never struck down an electoral map based on political gerrymandering.
But just because the Court hasn’t been able to define political gerrymandering clearly enough to find it unconstitutional doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Several sources site Wisconsin as a notable example of gerrymandered districts. According to NYT, the Republican-led state legislature redrew the district map in 2011 and that party has held a majority in the Wisconsin State Assembly ever since, even though, in 2018, Democrats won every statewide office.
Gerrymandering is so pervasive that even middle-schoolers know it’s a problem. This week, Forbes released an article about a group of middle school students in New York who created an algorithm to calculate just how gerrymandered voting districts are (and how to correct that) and won a national STEM competition for their efforts.
So why are we talking about gerrymandering? Because gerrymandering most often occurs during the redistricting process — and the redistricting process starts after the latest Census is complete. In case you didn’t notice — amidst all the other mayhem of 2020 — we just finished another Census, which means the time to redraw and set voting districts for the next 10 years is coming up.
All things considered, gerrymandering hasn’t been the worst problem in West Virginia, but with politics as polarized as they are, we’re afraid the 2021 maps won’t give voters a fair chance. Gerrymandering happens because the party in control has the opportunity to ensure it stays in control. Regardless of party affiliation, we should all be concerned when elected officials take actions that benefit themselves, rather than the people. We need to push harder for redistricting to be done by independent, nonpartisan contractors, so that neither political party gains an unfair advantage. And if the politicians won’t pass the responsibility to a neutral party, then we need to watch them closely and hold them accountable if they try to rig the system. Stopping and preventing gerrymandering is one way we keep our elections fair and free.
