Every ten years, every state redraws its electoral maps which determines where the electoral districts will be for the next ten years. In many states, it also determines what politician will represent the people in these districts due to a redistricting process called partisan gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is when the politicians in power draw the electoral districts in unnatural and partisan ways to ensure that a specific party wins the seat. In a study done by the Center for American Progress in May of 2019, it was found that 59 seats in the US House of Representatives were shifted during the 2012, 2014, and 2016 elections. By manipulating the electoral districts for their own party’s gain, incumbent politicians are disenfranchising millions of Americans.

For example, the most recent example of gerrymandering comes from New York when lawmakers in Albany redrew the state’s electoral districts map to create a “brutal gerrymander”. The new lawmakers map had more Democrat leaning districts, and there were accusations from Republicans that Democrats were using extreme partisan gerrymandering to tilt elections in their favor. Partisan gerrymandering causes several problems for voters and fair democracy.

Firstly, by reducing the number of competitive districts, then there is not a free and fair election. Gerrymandering breaks the procedural definition of democracy according to Dahl, who states that a democracy must allow everyone to run for public office and must have free and fair elections. However, gerrymandering does not allow for equal competition between politicians when the electoral districts are created for a specific party’s benefit. Additionally, Dahl argues that a democratic government must have citizens’ preferences weighed equally. However, for Americans in gerrymandered districts, this is not the case because they do not have a meaningful say about who represents them in Congress.

Additionally, gerrymandering is a form of stealth authoritarianism because gerrymandering relies on the fact that legislatures must redraw electoral maps every ten years for proper representation. Because redrawing these maps is a legal responsibility, gerrymandering becomes very hard to prove and very difficult to see unless done overtly.

One mechanism of stealth authoritarianism is through judicial review to consolidate power and avoid accountability. In the summer of 2019, the Supreme Court heard Rucho v. Common Cause, a gerrymandering case. The court ruled that gerrymandering cases cannot be reviewed by federal courts and cannot rule if it violates the constitution. Instead, the courts gave the power to state and local courts believing that they would be more qualified to see if districts were gerrymandered. However, it is the same people in power that gerrymander districts who determine whether or not the redistricting is partisan gerrymandering or not. Because most states appoint judges through the governor or state legislature, it would make sense if those judges wanted to appease the people who gave them their position.

The problem of gerrymandering is not limited to New York but extends across the country. This means that millions of Americans are placed in gerrymandered districts and do not have a meaningful say about their representation. While our course discusses democratic erosion on a federal level, it is interesting to see how partisan gerrymandering happens at a state level and has to ability to change what our Congress looks like. Gerrymandering is a danger to America’s representative democracy.