Electoral Geography: Gerrymandering, Voter Turnout, Historical Results APHG 2016

Printed in 1812, this political cartoon illustrates the electoral districts drawn by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the incumbent Democratic-Republican party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists. The cartoon depicts the bizarre shape of one district as a salamander, from which the term gerrymander is derived.

“Congress” There are 100 members in the Senate 2 per state There are 425 members in the U.S. House of Representatives Based on population (some states have more and some states have less)

Simple Majority More that 50% 24-26 is a simple majority of 50 votes

Forms of Gerrymandering: There are two principal strategies behind gerrymandering: maximizing the effective votes of supporters, and minimizing the effective votes of opponents. Forms of Gerrymandering: Packing-is to place as many voters of one type into a single district to reduce their influence in other districts. Redrawing the balanced electoral districts in this example creates a guaranteed 3-to-1 advantage in representation for the blue voters as 14 red voters are packed into the yellow district and the remaining 18 are cracked across the 3 blue districts.

Cracking-involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to reduce their representation by denying them a sufficiently large voting block in any particular district. The methods are typically combined, creating a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure even greater representation for voters of another type.

Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect – by packing opposition voters into districts they will already win (increasing excess votes for winners) by cracking the remainder among districts where they are moved into the minority (increasing votes for eventual losers), the number of wasted votes among the opposition can be maximized.

Incumbent gerrymandering Carved out with the aid of a computer, this congressional district was the product of California's incumbent gerrymandering. This is the district of Democrat Grace Flores Napolitano, who ran unopposed in 2004, obtaining 100 percent of the vote.

Examples of Bushmanders! Bullwinkle • (New York's 12th; Hispanic majority)

Pair of Ear Muffs • (Illinois's 4th; Hispanic majority)

Mark of Zorro • (Louisiana's 4th; black majority)

Satire Man peers under locked ballot box Date: 2005-03-31 Artist: Dale Cummings

Bush vs. Gore 2000 In this map and the following series of maps, the color Blue represents the Republicans and the color Red the Democrats.

Bush vs. Gore 2000 http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html

Bush vs. Kerry 2004

Bush vs. Kerry 2004 http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html

Obama vs. Romney 2012