Redistricting and Gerrymandering

In this explanation, you will be introduced to a creature known as the "Gerrymander." The beast (pictured below), is a mainstay of electoral geography, the branch of political geography that looks at how voting districts are drawn and redrawn.

The Gerrymander is quite common; you may live in an area that has been gerrymandered. The word is a portmanteau of Elbridge Gerry, Massachusetts governor in 1812, and "salamander," a mythical, fire-breathing creature. The Democratic-Republican party at the time created a congressional district around Boston said to be in the shape of a salamander, and the evocative name stuck. Is gerrymandering ethical? Read on to learn about the finer points of "cracking" and "packing," and you will find out!

Redistricting and Gerrymandering: Definition

First, let's look at the original "Gerry-Mander":

Fig. 1 - "The Gerry-Mander," an 1812 political cartoon in the Boston Centinel

The 1812 cartoon artist was critical, as many were at the time, of the tortuous boundaries of the new Massachusetts congressional district that Governor Gerry signed into law. The intent was to benefit the Democratic-Republican party by creating districts that the party could win because they linked areas with a majority of voters for that party, and it worked.

However, the redrawing of congressional district boundaries itself is not only legal but required and necessary in a representative democracy such as the US because geographically-define districts are apportioned by population and populations change over time.

A principal function of the US Decennial Census is to count people for the purpose of redrawing congressional district lines so that votes continue to be proportional.

Reapportionment, Redistricting, and Gerrymandering

Take a look at the 4th Congressional District in Illinois: a classic gerrymandered shape. The odd shape, however, was a result of a bipartisan, court-ordered agreement to create a Hispanic district around Chicago, so it combined an area of Puerto Rican population (the north side) with a majority Mexican American area (the south side).

Fig. 2 - The Fourth Congressional District of Illinois

To understand how a shape like Illinois' 4th District happened, let's start at the beginning. Literally, the beginning: Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Rationale for Redistricting

Regardless of whether reapportionment of seats affects a state, redistricting always does. Each state is required by Federal law to redraw its district lines based on new Census data. State legislatures also redraw districts for their own state legislator seats.

The first Census was in 1790 and there has been one every ten years since. District lines changed infrequently before the 1960s, but after the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, more attention was paid to the ways that the two main US political parties used Census data to draw lines that either gave an advantage to their own party's candidates or at least did not disadvantage them.

As you will see below, there are ways to redraw districts that spread out the opposing party's voters so that they don't form a majority anywhere, or cram the opposing party's voters into a single district; either way, the goal is to win as many districts as you can in a given state, at least until the next Census comes along. This can end up being highly unethical and even illegal.

In 36 states, Federal and state redistricting is officially carried out by the legislatures, while in the rest, there are commissions intended to be non-partisan that do it. All US states completed their redistricting plans before the 2022 Midterm elections, though several were challenged in courts because of charges of discriminatory or otherwise unfair gerrymandering.

Types of Gerrymandering

Three kinds of gerrymandering take place, and all are subject to legal challenges at the state and federal levels:

Bipartisan Gerrymandering

When major parties in power in a given state find it convenient or necessary, they may agree to gerrymander districts as a way of power-sharing. This may also be mandated by a court decision. Illinois' 4th District (2013-2023), for example, was mandated by a Federal court to be redrawn as a majority-minority district. (After 2023, it will take another, completely different, shape.)

Racial Gerrymandering

US history is filled with examples of voter disenfranchisement. The VRA of 1965 is cited by the NAACP and ACLU who charge that racial disenfranchisement, particularly of Hispanic and Black voters, is ongoing. Minority voters may be packed into a single district, removing their influence elsewhere, or cracked, which means split up among various districts, thereby diluting their influence (this assumes that minority voters often vote for the same party).

Racial gerrymandering is a type of partisan gerrymandering.

Partisan Gerrymandering

This is gerrymandering that one party or wing of a party finds unfair, based on perceptions of voting blocs having been packed or cracked. It may involve any constituency: for example, suburban, white voters who tend to vote Republican may be cracked across various districts to dilute their influence; this is not "racial gerrymandering" with intent to disenfranchise a minority, but if the gerrymandering was partisan, then it might be deemed illegal in court.

Redistricting and Gerrymandering Difference

Gerrymandering is a specific type of redistricting that produces congressional districts with odd shapes. The shapes are often what give away the intent to "pack" or "crack" voters to place a party at an advantage. The odd shape is a result of connecting different widely-spaced concentrations of a certain group in a single geographic area.

Redistricting is always required by law but the results may be challenged in court. Gerrymandering, where it is not required by law (as in bipartisan cases), is often determined by courts to be illegal.

Redistricting and Gerrymandering Similarities

Often, "redistricting" and "gerrymandering" are two terms for the same event, depending on which side of the aisle you are on.

Here's how it works: a commission appointed by a state legislature, new Census data in hand, is charged with redrawing district lines. The state has rules in place intended to prevent partisan and racial gerrymandering: these might include requirements to preserve neutrality between parties, submit multiple proposals, rules to avoid certain district shapes, and boundaries that have to follow local political subdivision boundaries (of townships, counties, etc.), in addition to Federal law that stipulates that districts cannot be broken into parts and must have equal populations (of all people, not voting age people or citizens.)

In the above fictional but highly realistic scenario, the commission submits several maps to the state legislature, which votes to accept one of them. Up to this point, we are talking about redistricting. But then, the minority party cries "gerrymandering!" claiming its voters have been cracked across several districts and will lose majorities and thus seats. The governor, who is a member of the minority party in this example, vetoes the redistricting plan, but then the legislature overturns her veto. It goes to the state's supreme court, which rules in favor of the original plan, declaring that it was not gerrymandered after all.

Redistricting and Gerrymandering Congressional Districts

Let's look at a case of widely-acknowledged partisan gerrymandering:

Florida's 5th Congressional District

Florida's racially and ethnically diverse population is nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, making it a "battleground" or "swing" state in national presidential elections. The situation with congressional districts is also fraught. We have pictured two maps representing the before (2014) and after (2017) of a Florida Supreme Court case where it was charged that the 5th District, after the 2010 Census, was gerrymandered. But as is not unusual in electoral politics, there were a couple of twists.

Fig. 4 - Florida's 5th Congressional District in 2014

Fig. 5 - Florida's 5th Congressional District in 2017

Historically, Florida's 5th district (formerly numbered as its 3rd) was a polygon around Orlando that was majority white and was consistently won by Republican candidates. A redrawn district emerged in 2013, and Democrats sued, alleging that it was gerrymandered to pack Black voters into a single district. The Florida Supreme Court required a new district map, which moved the 5th district to a completely different location, connecting Jacksonville and Tallahassee. After 2017, it was a majority-minority district (AKA minority-majority district) where a minority, in this case, Black, held a comfortable population majority, so could be guaranteed a seat.

The catch? The 2013 gerrymandered district was defended by part of the Democratic Party that wished to guarantee its Black Democrat candidates won (even if Black voters were packed there), so the 2013-2017 situation pitted Democrats against Democrats. The compromise reached was seen as a less gerrymandered, more equitable solution that did not diminish the impact of Black voters in Florida.

The twist? After the 2020 Census, Ron DeSantis, Republic governor of Florida, took an active role in a new round of redistricting, and the resulting map erases Democrat gains (and the 5th District lines before 2020), establishing new districts that appear to crack minority voters and Democrats across the entire north of the state.