The state has appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court will likely hear the case later this year.

Redistricting is the process of redrawing the boundaries that determine congressional districts in each state, in order to balance the population among districts. Here’s what you should know about the issue. Editor's Note: This article was originally published on March 31, 2017, as Barack Obama returned to politics to tackle the issue. “You can think about them all as real harms...but they all have very different causes and they all have very different symptoms and they all have very different cures.”. Court cases aren’t the be-all and end-all for fighting gerrymandering. All districts within the state must have populations that are roughly equal to one another.

The young person’s guide to conquering (and saving) the world. One manifestation of gerrymandering occurs when the majority party in a state legislature manipulates district boundaries so that voters for the opposing party are either dispersed throughout the state so they won’t make up a majority in any district, or packed together in a minimum number of districts and don’t have enough representation in other districts to win the majority of the state’s House seats. The law consolidated the Federalist Party vote in a few districts and thus gave disproportionate representation to Democratic-Republicans. And it worked.

“A lot of people, as you go around the country, will tell you, ‘I don’t vote in these elections, because the results are predetermined and the system is rigged — and the people aren’t necessarily wrong,” Li says. What Is the Difference Between Criminal Law and Civil Law? Get kids back-to-school ready with Expedition: Learn. So without Section 4, there’s not much to Section 5. Broadly, gerrymandering is when one political party redraws the boundaries to give it an advantage over its opposition. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is a provision that requires states with a history of racial discrimination to get “preclearance,” or approval, from the justice department on any redistricting that would affect minorities. Every time the districts are redrawn, gerrymandering becomes a popular topic in the media.

Gerrymandering has been condemned because it violates two basic tenets of electoral apportionment—compactness and equality of size of constituencies. However, the Wisconsin case ended inconclusively in June 2018.

Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. In 2014, The Nation reported, Republicans won 52 percent of the House votes but 57 percent of the seats. As The Washington Post noted, when Republicans aren’t concerned about losing their seats, courtesy of gerrymandered districts, they don’t have much reason to reach across party lines and compromise. Who Was the First Woman to Run for President of the United States? “It is unfortunately a process that oftentimes becomes politicized and an opportunity to try to manipulate the maps, rather than simply to draw fair maps,” Li says.

Alternatively, voters from the opposing party can be packed into a minority of voting districts to reduce the number of seats the opposing party can control. The point of redistricting is to ensure that every voter has an equal say by creating equal-population-size districts — but that’s not usually the end result.

“REDMAP was an effort by Republican-aligned groups to take over state legislatures in order to be able to control redistricting,” Li says. In other words, gerrymandering can be used by office holders of the party in power to either spread voters from the opposing party across districts or to give a competitive edge to their own candidates.

Teen Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Before we get into gerrymandering, we have to talk redistricting, which is at the core of the issue and important in determining who represents you in Congress. If their party votes are locked in and Democratic voters hold no weight in their districts, then there’s no real need to appeal to them. Related: Barack Obama Is Returning to Politics to Address Gerrymandering. In the United States, representatives to state assemblies and the U.S. House of Representatives are determined by the voters within voting districts in each state. All rights reserved. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlaws discriminatory voting practices, prohibits redrawing districts for the purpose of minimizing the influence of racial minorities. This solution could represent a majority party’s win while preventing a winner-take-all situation, but it would also mean newer and bigger statehouses (and a larger U.S. Capitol building!) Arizona, California, and Idaho already rely on independent commissions to produce voting district maps that are both just and fair. Gerrymandering may sound like a silly word, but it's serious stuff.
In 2012, despite the fact that Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, Republicans maintained control of the House. Several solutions have been devised to reduce the influence of gerrymandering.
redistricting likely caused the GOP to win, when Republicans aren’t concerned about losing their seats, cases arguing that states racially gerrymandered, Supreme Court has called for further review, “invalidated a gerrymander for providing unfair advantage to a political party,”, Supreme Court will likely hear the case later this year, Barack Obama Is Returning to Politics to Address Gerrymandering. But in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Section 4, a provision of the Voting Rights Act that determines which states are covered by Section 5. Broadly, gerrymandering is when one political party redraws the boundaries to give it an advantage over its opposition. In November 2016, a federal district court ruled that Wisconsin’s partisan gerrymandering was unconstitutional, the first time a federal court has ever “invalidated a gerrymander for providing unfair advantage to a political party,” according to Salon. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Fewer competitive U.S. House districts and safe incumbents after redistricting: In 2010, 70 of 435 U.S. House districts had a competitive partisan balance of 47% to 53%. For example, in Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates won 51 percent of the popular vote but only 28 percent of the congressional seats; and in Ohio, Democrats won 48 percent of the popular vote but only 25 percent of the seats.

Now, the Supreme Court's June 27 ruling was a huge blow to efforts to fight gerrymandering through the courts.

Unlike the boundaries between individual U.S. states, voting district boundaries are redrawn every 10 years to coincide with the U.S. Census.