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"A state may take race into account as one of several factors when drawing district lines—but without a compelling reason, race cannot be the 'predominant' reason for a district’s shape," according to the Brennan Center for Justice. You may have heard about this in the news, but how is it affecting you? And it creates districts of voters who are socioeconomically, racially or politically alike so that members of Congress are safe from potential challengers and, as a result, have little reason to compromise with their colleagues from the other party. Some redistricting commissions are expected to resist political influence and act independently from the parties and the elected officials in that state. Here’s a breakdown of who is responsible for redistricting in each state: State legislatures: In 30 states, the elected state lawmakers are responsible for drawing their own legislative districts and in 31 states the boundaries for the congressional districts in their states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. The act, process, or an instance of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, 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). Favoring one political party at the expense of another. Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal before the midterm elections in 2010: The Republican victories in statehouses across the country allowed the GOP in those states to then control the redistricting process taking effect in 2012 and shape congressional races, and ultimately policy, until the next census in 2020. Imagine a geographical grid of one hundred voters with their political ideologies represented by the colors, blue and red. Omissions? Gerrymandering is the act of redrawing the lines of a congressional district to give one political party a voting advantage over another. gerrymandering and the constitutional norm against government partisanship Holder views gerrymandering , which manipulates district lines to benefit one party, as part of a broader struggle for voting rights, since it effectively diminishes the value of certain communities' votes. Gerrymandering, 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). How to use gerrymander in a sentence. Our latest episode for parents features the topic of empathy. A district or configuration of districts whose boundaries are very irregular due to gerrymandering. In states where they controlled the process of drawing congressional district boundaries, they captured seven out of 10 seats with only 56 percent of the popular vote. By “packing”…. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In the 2012 congressional elections, for example, Republicans won 53 percent of the popular vote but carried three out of four House seats in states where they oversaw redistricting. Gerrymandering occurs when voting districts are redrawn to benefit one party over another in elections, forcing the other side to “waste” votes. He continued: The most concerted effort to redraw political boundaries to benefit a political party in modern history happened after the 2010 census. Racial gerrymandering…, …suppression is racial or partisan gerrymandering (the drawing of electoral districts by state legislatures in such a way as to dilute the voting power of members of a certain racial group or political party), though it does not specifically prevent any person from voting or registering to vote. The physical impact of gerrymandering can be seen on any map of congressional districts. In Spain, they are constitutionally fixed since 1978. There the Court’s conservative majority, over the bitter objections of its more liberal members, declared (5–4) that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”. Six states use advisory commissions to draw state legislative districts. But the political impact is much more significant. The program began with successful efforts to regain majorities in key states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin. Apportionment and gerrymandering. Following Kennedy’s retirement in 2018, the Supreme Court once again took up the issue of the justiciability of political gerrymandering claims in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019). The Impact of Partisan Gerrymandering By Alex Tausanovitch October 1, 2019, 9:01 am Once a decade, every state redraws its electoral districts, determining which … Gerrymandering is the act of drawing congressional, state legislative or other political boundaries to favor a political party or one particular candidate for elected office. The origin of the term gerrymander dates back to the early 1800s in Massachusetts. From the Cambridge English Corpus In contrast, if local boundaries are respected, levels of malapportionment increase, while gerrymandering becomes more difficult to accomplish. The purpose of gerrymandering is to grant one party power over another by creating districts that hold dense concentrations of voters who are favorable to their policies. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Gerrymandering is the practice of dividing election districts to give special advantages to one group and usually to give one political party an electoral majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the opposition’s voting strength in the fewest districts possible. "Gerrymandering is not hard," Sam Wang, the founder of Princeton University's Election Consortium, wrote in 2012. Technically, gerrymandering is illegal, but it’s hard to prove. His subject areas include philosophy, law, social science, politics, political theory, and religion. In most cases, the process of drawing congressional and legislative boundaries is left to state legislatures. A basic objection to gerrymandering of any kind is that it tends to violate two tenets of electoral apportionment—compactness and equality of size of constituencies. Here's what you need to know about gerrymandering, the word you're hearing so much about today. ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. The project, orchestrated by Republicans using sophisticated software and about $30 million, was called REDMAP, for Redistricting Majority Project. Gerrymandering, which is the idea of shaping districts to benefit one political party or another. The way congressional and legislative boundaries are drawn determines who wins federal and state elections, and ultimately which political party holds the power in making crucial policy decisions. It is a way that governing parties try to cement themselves in power by tilting the political map steeply in their favor. The four states that employ independent commissions are: Advisory commissions: Four states use and advisory commission consisting of a mix of legislators and non-legislators to draw up congressional maps that are then presented to the legislature for a vote. Norton explained the emergence of the epithet "gerrymander" this way: The late William Safire, a political columnist and linguist for The New York Times, made note of the word's pronunciation in his 1968 book Safire's New Political Dictionary: Tom Murse is a former political reporter and current Managing Editor of daily paper "LNP," and weekly political paper "The Caucus," both published by LNP Media in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. ‘This is a government that blatantly indulged in open gerrymander, for example the re-allocation of defence force votes among surrounding marginal seats.’ ‘He said the Government's electoral reforms would create a gerrymander, where electoral boundaries are created to give one party an advantage.’ Gerrymandering is used to give the majority party the greatest number of districts that they can reasonably win and the minority party the fewest number of safe districts. Every 10 years there's a U.S. Census, and based on that census, different states will might get a few more representatives or a few less representatives, and so state legislatures will often have to redistrict. Instead, the justices held unanimously (9–0) that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, and the case was remanded (7–2) to the district court for further argument. …rights is racial or partisan gerrymandering. Gerrymandering Gerrymandering; Gerrymandering Definition. The law was designed to end discrimination against black Americans, particularly those in the South after the Civil War. Regarding cases of gerrymandering based on race, the Supreme Court has held (in Thornburg v. Gingles, 1986) that such practices are incompatible with Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (as amended in 1982), which generally prohibits voting standards or practices whose practical effect is that members of racial minority groups “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to…elect representatives of their choice.” In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court ruled that electoral districts whose boundaries cannot be explained except on the basis of race can be challenged as potential violations of the equal protection clause, and in Miller v. Johnson (1995) it held that the equal protection clause also prohibits the use of race as the “predominant factor” in drawing electoral-district boundaries. partisan. Gerrymandering in the United States has been used to increase the power of a political party. In Davis v. Bandemer (1986), however, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that political gerrymanders could be found unconstitutional (under the equal protection clause) if the resulting electoral system “is arranged in a manner that will consistently degrade a voter’s or a group of voters’ influence in the political process as a whole.” A majority of the Court also agreed that the instance of gerrymandering before it did not display any of the “identifying characteristics of a nonjusticiable political question” that had been laid out in Baker v. Carr, including, as the Baker Court had put it, “a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.” Although the majority in Bandemer could not agree on what standards should be used to adjudicate challenges to political gerrymanders, it refused to accept that none existed, declaring on that basis that “we decline to hold that such claims are never justiciable.”, In 2004, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, a plurality of the Court pointedly embraced what the Bandemer Court had declined to hold, on the grounds that “no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged” since the Bandemer decision. Both major political parties are responsible for the misshapen legislative and congressional districts in the United States. That’s because states are required by law to redraw all 435 congressional and legislative boundaries based on the decennial census every 10 years. The term "gerrymandering" was coined by a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry that was named because one of the districts looked like a salamander. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, How the Votes Are Counted on Election Day, Why Puerto Rico Matters in the US Presidential Election, 15th Amendment Grants Voting Rights to Black American Men, Black Women Who Have Run for President of the United States, How the US Electoral College System Works, How Vacancies in the US Congress are Filled, All the Women Who Have Run for President of the US, to favor a political party or one particular candidate for elected office, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, based on the decennial census every 10 years, North Dakota (Legislative districts only), South Dakota (Legislative districts only), Pennsylvania (Legislative districts only). Gerrymandering is the act of drawing congressional, state legislative or other political boundaries to favor a political party or one particular candidate for elected office. Gerrymandering didn't save Elbridge Gerry's governorship, but it established itself as, if not the most partisan or fair strategy, a viable one for electoral victory. To keep politics and the potential for gerrymandering out of the process, state lawmakers and public officials are prohibited from serving on the commissions. But not all. The purpose of gerrymandering is to grant one party power over another by creating districts that hold dense concentrations of voters who are favorable to their policies. Pointing to the rapid development and routine use of computer-assisted districting, he argued that such technologies “may produce new methods of analysis that…would facilitate court efforts to identify and remedy the burdens” imposed by political gerrymanders, “with judicial intervention limited by the derived standards.”. Definition of gerrymandering : the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections To an untrained eye, the proposed boundaries look like the etchings of a mapmaker on heavy pharmaceuticals. [After Elbridge Gerry + (sala)mander (from the shape of an election district created while Gerry was governor of Massachusetts).] Gerrymandering often leads to disproportionate politicians from one party being elected to office. The Court’s ruling, however, did not consider whether the efficiency gap amounted to the “judicially discernible and manageable” standard it had been waiting for. [ ( jer-ee-man-duhr) ] To change the boundaries of legislative districts to favor one party over another. gerrymander. Some states also prohibit legislative staffers and lobbyists, as well. In the end, though, most cases of gerrymandering are legal. Gerrymandering is when a political group tries to change a voting district to create a result that helps them or hurts the group who is against them. Until the 1980s, disputes regarding political gerrymandering were generally considered nonjusticiable (not decidable by federal courts) on the presumption that they presented “political questions” that are properly decided by the legislative or the executive branch. Redistricting is one of the most important processes in American politics. Where Did the Term “Gerrymander” Come From? Just such a standard was proposed in Gill v. Whitford (2018), a challenge to a Wisconsin redistricting law enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature following the 2010 decennial census. Politics is full of all different types of moves and manipulation to win. One of the unique things about Gill v. Whitford is that, unlike many other gerrymandering cases, the Wisconsin Assembly districts do not have bizarre shapes. The authors of the 2011 map were able to preserve relatively compact and even-looking districts. The constitutional significance of the latter principle was set forth in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued in 1962, Baker v. Carr, in which the Court held that the failure of the legislature of Tennessee to reapportion state legislative districts to take into account significant changes in district populations had effectively reduced the weight of votes cast in more populous districts, amounting to a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Key Concepts: Terms in this set (17) ... A belief that ultimately government power should reside with the people and that government policy should reflect the will of the people. Some states impanel special commissions. The drawing of artificial lines to establish voting districts based on political motives rather than geographic boundaries in order to achieve favorable electoral results. Interested in finding out more uniquely political concepts? The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans. It is named after Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) of the Democratic-Republican Party, which later coalesced into the modern Democratic Party.Gerrymandering works by wasting votes. It leads many Americans to feel their voices don’t matter. What is gerrymandering? The outline of one of these districts was thought to resemble a salamander. Typically, the dominant party in a state legislature (which is responsible for drawing the boundaries of congressional districts) will try to concentrate the opposing party's strength in as few districts as possible, while giving itself likely majorities in as many districts as possible. The redistricting process begins soon after the U.S. Census Bureau completes its work and begins sending data back to the states. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in 1964, called for a fair and equitable distribution of voters among congressional districts, but its ruling dealt mostly with the actual number of voters in each and whether they were rural or urban, not the partisan or racial makeup of each: The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 took on the issue of using race as a factor in drawing congressional districts, saying it is illegal to deny minorities their constitutional right “to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”. Corrections? The plaintiffs argued that efficiency gaps of 7 percent or greater were legally significant because they were more likely than smaller gaps to persist through the 10-year life of a redistricting plan. Although it does not prevent any person from voting or registering to vote, gerrymandering ensures that a targeted minority group or political party will be permanently underrepresented in a state legislature or in Congress relative to its absolute numbers in the state. In that case, the plaintiffs argued that the discriminatory effects of the redistricting plan could be measured objectively by comparing the “efficiency” of votes cast for Republican or Democratic candidates in state legislative elections since 2012. Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. Updates? A satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that appeared in the Boston Gazette graphically transformed the districts into a fabulous animal, “The Gerry-mander,” fixing the term in the popular imagination. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose administration enacted a law in 1812 defining new state senatorial districts. The term is derived from the name of Gov. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The public is largely shut out of the process," wrote Erika L. Wood, the director of the Redistricting & Representation Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Attempts to gerrymander happen only once a decade and soon after years ending in a zero. https://www.britannica.com/topic/gerrymandering, gerrymander - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). The division of districts to produce either fair or gerrymandered results. Redistricting must be completed in time for the 2012 elections. Countries such as the U.K., Australia, Canada and most of those in Europe have transferred responsibility for defining constituency boundaries to neutral or cross-party bodies. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Learn more. “The Gerry-mander,” political cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale. Gerrymander definition is - the act or method of gerrymandering. One year later, in Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court declared that congressional electoral districts must be drawn in such a way that, “as nearly as is practicable, one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” And in the same year, the Court affirmed, in Reynolds v. Sims, that “the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis.”. Enter gerrymandering: A funny sounding word used to describe how congressional district boundaries are drawn to give one political party an advantage over the other—something the founders didn’t see coming. The states that use advisory commissions are: Politician commissions: Ten states create panels made up of state lawmakers and other elected officials to redraw their own legislative boundaries. He was running to represent his district and perceived to be a threat by the current district chair and effectively cut out of his district through gerrymandering preventing him from being able to represent that district. Gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts to favor one political party, skews election results, makes races less competitive, hurts communities of color, and thwarts the will of the voters. Gerrymandering is just one of the tools used by governments to give their parties a leg up against the competition. The states that allow their legislatures to perform the redistricting are: Independent commissions: These apolitical panels are used in four states to redraw legislative districts. Although siding with the plurality in rejecting the challenge to the political gerrymander in question, Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted that it had not been long enough since the Bandemer decision to conclude that no suitable standards could ever emerge (“by the timeline of the law 18 years is rather a short period”). Gerrymandering is the process of drawing congressional districts in a way that favors one political party or interest group. Go check out examples of political jargon. While these states take redistricting out of the hands of the entire legislature, the process is highly political, or partisan, and often results in gerrymandering districts. Hakeem Jeffries is a classic example of political gerrymandering, what happened to him? Political gerrymandering characteristically results in a greater number of “wasted” votes for the disfavoured party (i.e., votes for a losing candidate or votes for a winning candidate in excess of the number needed to win), a discrepancy that can be represented as an “efficiency gap” between the parties when the difference between wasted votes is divided by the total number of votes cast. Many boundaries zig and zag east and west, north and south across city, township and county lines as if for no reason at all. …must not be confused with gerrymandering—a form of arbitrary districting used to benefit the party that at a given time controls the apportionment process. Due to the perceived issues associated with gerrymandering and its effect on competitive elections and democratic accountability, numerous countries have enacted reforms making the practice either more difficult or less effective. The Supreme Court followed up in 2015 by saying states could form independent, nonpartisan commissions to redraw legislative and congressional boundaries. Gerrymandering is the act of altering political boundaries in order to give an unfair advantage to one political party or group of people. The word is a combination of the words Gerry, for the state's governor, Elbridge Gerry, and salamander, as a particular electoral district was jokingly said to be shaped like a lizard. Charles Ledyard Norton, writing in the 1890 book Political Americanisms, blamed Gerry for signing into a law a bill in 1811 "readjusting the representative districts so as to favor the Democrats and weaken the Federalists, although the last-named party polled nearly two-thirds of the votes cast.". Gerrymandering -- drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party -- is a difficult process to explain. In 1963, in Gray v. Sanders, the Court first articulated the principle of “one person, one vote” in striking down Georgia’s county-based system for counting votes in Democratic primary elections for the office of U.S. senator. Gerrymandering has become common in American politics and is often blamed for the gridlock in Congress, polarization of the electorate and disenfranchisement among voters. 2. gerrymandering and the constitutional norm against government partisanship Instead the bureaucratic fat keeps growing, aggravated by an increasing trend toward congressional gerrymandering and the ever-growing number of party-list representatives, many of them with vague constituencies. The 10 states that use politician commissions are: The term gerrymander is derived from the name of a Massachusetts governor in the early 1800s, Elbridge Gerry. Gerrymandering reduces the number of competitive congressional races across the United States by segregating like-minded voters from each other. gerrymandering meaning: 1. an occasion when someone in authority changes the borders of an area in order to increase the…. Elections may be nominally free, but governments engage in extensive gerrymandering, manipulation of voter registration and harassment of opposition parties. Elbridge Gerry was a powerful voice in the founding of the nation, but today he’s best known for the political practice with an amphibious origin "The process is marked by secrecy, self-dealing and backroom logrolling among elected officials. A more rigorous definition of gerrymandering. President Barack Obama, speaking in his final State of the Union address in 2016, called on both the Republican and Democratic parties to end the practice. The governors in most of those states have the authority to veto the plans. The same was true for Democrats. 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