Gerrymandering is a word well known to most with even a passing interest in politics, but to many who don’t pay attention, it’s a word they’ve just recently started hearing. Gerrymandering is the process by which elected officials are able to engineer their own election results by redistricting how votes are counted. This makes it so that instead of the voting populace choosing their elected officials, as intended, elected officials can choose who votes for them, subverting democracy and weakening vertical accountability(the level to which representatives can be held accountable by members of the pop). For sometime now the Republican Party has been accused of gerrymandering and the Democratic Party less so, but in response to support of gerrymandering to strengthen Republican strongholds by Republican President Donald Trump recently, Democratic Party leaders, such as House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of Virginia have made a public and passionate effort to embrace gerrymandering under the rationale that when gerrymandering is being done by a dangerous opponent, gerrymandering yourself is not only more acceptable, but the only way to go about politics. This current push in Virginia comes alongside pushes for similar gerrymandering tactics to be implemented in states such as California, Texas, Florida and various other states to various degrees. This new status quo being set may very well be the only way to continue going about politics, but that scenario paints a very bleak picture for political representation for the people of the United States. The idea that two parties gerrymandering is better than one is easily comprehensible, but it also means that the political system has given up entirely on truly representing the people. To go into more specifics, gerrymandering is done by either “packing” or “cracking” voters across districts. Voter packing is done when two districts would both have a reasonable Party A majority and a Party B politician would create two districts one with a 90% Party A majority and the other with a slight Party B majority creating an extra Party B seat where there was none for contrast cracking is done when two districts one with a larger Party A majority and one with a slimmer Party B majority are split up so that both have a slight Party A majority giving both of their seats to Party A. An important thing to note in all this talk of Gerrymandering and its subversion of democratic principles, is that in some cases, the voters themselves are supporting it themselves; In Virginia, the redrawn map that advantages the Democratic party was approved by ballot measure 52% to 48%, raising an inherent question in debates around democratic erosion: If the voters support the erosion of democracy, is it not democratic to carry out their will? The current state of politics with its heavy polarization has led the Democratic Party and its supporters to adopt a mentality of winning at all costs abandoning the “you go low we go high” message that they had once lived by. This full throated support of a pragmatic, no-holds-barred approach to politics is a rare case of democratic erosion where both the party in power and the opposition party are attempting to subvert or avert the guard rails and constraints placed upon them under democracy, typically as one side flouts the rules, the other clings to them in an appeal to normalcy and convention, painting the eroder as someone attacking the just system, but the United States is in a unique place where not only have the people reached a point where there is a widespread feeling that the established democratic status quo can’t bring about the desired results a similar feeling is extending to the representatives themselves. It’s important to take note of this, as it’s all too easy to see politics as a game with sides where one team is just and the other unjust, and see their actions through that lens, but in this scenario America is in a situation where no matter who wins, democracy has lost.
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5793878/virginia-redistricting-results-trump
Hi Simi, this was a really interesting post to read! Gerrymandering has really been a hot topic of late in the US. You are right that it has been going on for as long as politics have been around, but I feel that it has really been brought into the public spotlight over the last few months. I found your definition of voter “packing” and “cracking” to be really helpful in understanding the different gerrymandering tactics. I think the most key part of your post was your assessment that “no matter who wins, democracy has lost.” In a time where everyone gets very sucked into extreme party perspectives, it’s really valuable to keep the awareness that American democracy is at risk, and we have to respond to democratic threats in a democratic manner, rather than feeding into the issue.
Definitely an interesting concept to think about, and I have to agree that just because one party engages in unfair electoral practices is not actually a green light for the other party to engage in the same practices. However, if an opponent is blatantly cheating and there’s no one to stop them, at what point do you also have to engage in that kind of strategy? This isn’t to defend either party, and I definitely agree that gerrymandering is spiraling out of control, and that’s bad for democracy. I just don’t see another option unless both of the two major parties were willing to mutually decide to give up the practice entirely. With the recent Supreme Court case surrounding voting rights and the various gerrymandering efforts you pointed out, I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.