Gerrymandering

in the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to create partisan advantaged districts. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander

Gerrymandering

In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African- American or other racial minorities, known as "majority-minority districts".

Brighter blue is more Democratic, while brighter red is more Republican.

The two goals of gerrymandering are to maximize the effect of supporters' votes, and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes. One strategy, packing, is to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts. In some cases, this may be done to obtain representation for a community of common interest (such as to create a majority-minority district), rather than to dilute that interest over several districts to a point of ineffectiveness (and, when minority groups are involved, to avoid possible racial discrimination).

A second strategy, cracking, involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district. An example would be to split the voters in an urban area among several districts where the majority of voters are suburban, on the assumption that the two groups would vote differently, and the majority of suburban voters would elect their candidates of choice.

Basics of Gerrymandering: packing & cracking

Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect. By packing opposition voters into districts they will already win (increasing excess votes for winners) and 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

Cracking An example of "cracking" style of gerrymandering. The urban (and mostly liberal Democratic) concentration of Columbus, Ohio, located at the center of the map in Franklin County, is split into thirds, each segment attached to—and outnumbered by—largely conservative suburbs that vote Republican.

Packing Designed to proportionally segment voters of the Democratic Party, California's 23rd congressional district, is confined to a narrow strip of coast, an example of the packing style of districting.

North Carolina's 12th congressional district An example of packing. The district has predominantly African-American residents who vote for Democrats.

The odd shapes of California Senate districts in Southern California (2008) have led to claims of gerrymandering.

The earmuff shape of Illinois's 4th congressional district packs two Hispanic areas while retaining narrow contiguity along Interstate 294

Illinois' 17th congressional district in the western portion of the state is gerrymandered: the major urban centers are anchored and Decatur is included, although nearly isolated from the main district.

After the Democrat Jim Matheson was elected in 2000, the Utah legislature redrew the 2nd congressional district to favor future Republican majorities. The predominantly Democratic city of Salt Lake was connected to predominantly Republican eastern and southern Utah through a thin sliver of land running through Utah County. But, Matheson continued to be re-elected. In 2011, the legislature created new congressional districts that combined conservative rural areas with more urban areas to dilute Democratic votes.

Bi-partisan incumbent gerrymanderin g produced California District 38, home to Grace Napolitano, a Democrat, who ran unopposed in 2004.

Texas' controversial 2003 partisan gerrymander produced Texas District 22 for former Rep. Tom DeLay, a Republican.