What is It?

Gerry-Mandering is the despicable practice of redrawing electoral districts (AKA the “political map”) to create “safe” elections for politicians, so they don’t have to worry about a real challenge. Wikipedia has a lot more. This New Yorker article will give you the full run-down.

“There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress, the level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.”

- Richard Pildes, Professor of Law at New York University

Here is what it looks like:

On the left, the current gerry-mandered electoral districts. On the right are maps generated using an unbiased mathematical method.

Maps from RangeVoting.org

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)