Gerrymandering is defined as the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to give an advantage to a certain political group, party, or economic class. This manipulation usually comes in the form of “cracking” and “packing” the districts, which dilutes the voting power of your opponents while concentrating your own.
Gerrymandering is the blatant abuse of political power to attempt to rig elections by dividing the voting power of the people into sections that favor their agendas. This rampant redistricting causes maps to resemble abstract paintings as politicians manipulate the distribution of voters to favor their agendas. The sad thing is that this has been going on for so long that many consider it just a normal part of how our government functions.
Politicians should be chosen by the voters, not the other way around. With how wild these maps have become, it is impossible to tell just how many election results have been altered using this method unless the maps were cleaned and the districts went back to their original divisions.
It is important to note that not all district maps should be perfectly square districts. Many of the original district’s shapes were impacted by the geography of the region, often being drawn around mountains or rivers. While a non-gerrymandered district map would consist of a fairer distribution of district lines, it would not be a neat pattern of boxes due to geographic restrictions.
Gerrymandering is a practice that should have been made illegal by the federal government a long time ago. It is technically illegal to gerrymander districts if it is done to reduce the value of minority votes. However, if it is done with only partisan intentions behind it, it is perfectly legal. Personally, I believe that the act of redrawing districts with any other intention than to make the elections as non-biased as possible should be illegal. America was founded on freedom of speech and the rights of representation. Why should those who are supposed to represent our interests have the right to decide how our votes are distributed?
