This is an opinion from the Center.
One of the great political distortions of our age is the steady rise of gerrymandering. For more than a decade, this practice has grown sharper, more cunning, and more corrosive to the democratic spirit.
In brief, gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral districts to grant one political faction advantage over another. It is, in effect, the quiet sabotage of democracy, an artful redrawing of lines that blunts the people’s will before it ever reaches the ballot box.
The term itself traces back to Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose contorted map of 1812 produced a district so twisted it resembled a salamander. The press dubbed it the “Gerry-mander,” and the name, regrettably, endured. Since then, with every census, politicians have taken to expanding or preserving these lines for their own gain. Court decisions like Baker v. Carr in 1962, Shaw v. Reno in 1993, set limits on racial gerrymandering, yet the practice persists, now armed with extraordinary precision. Data modeling, voting histories, and modern software can carve districts street by street, like a scalpel in the wrong hands.
The objective is plain: retain power. Gerrymandering creates “safe seats” where representatives no longer fear losing elections. Instead of voters choosing their leaders, leaders effectively choose their voters. Some votes are magnified; others are quietly smothered. Minority communities, young people, and entire neighborhoods are silenced not by force, but by geometry. And with each distortion, faith in the system withers; citizens begin to suspect, often correctly, that the game is rigged before it begins.
Of course, maps must be drawn and censuses must be taken. But the constant manipulation of district lines for partisan advantage is the very sort of conduct our founders would have recoiled from. It sustains the two-party machinery at the expense of the people it claims to serve.
This year has offered a particularly disheartening spectacle. In Texas, a new congressional map was passed to expand the number of safe Republican seats from 25 to 30. In California, Proposition 50 empowered legislators to redraw their own map, an attempt to counterbalance Texas by engineering Democratic gains. Thus, each state mirrors the other, each justifying its maneuver by pointing across the aisle. It is politics conducted with all the maturity of children quarrelling in a schoolyard.
Articles like this one from Fox News (Right bias), DOJ joins lawsuit against Newsom over 'racial gerrymander' of California map, highlight the hypocrisy of Pam Bondi attacking Gov. Newsom for pushing for gerrymandering, while her own party redrew the lines in Texas.
When both sides argue, “If they do it, then we shall do it too,” the republic itself becomes the casualty.
For at the end of the day, any map designed to dilute the voice of the people is not drawn for the nation, it is drawn for the party. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, born in the aftermath of the Civil War, was crafted to protect Americans from unequal treatment by their own government. Yet now, in several states, governments behave in ways that echo the very inequities that clause sought to extinguish. It is a troubling irony, and a sorrowful reminder of how easily noble principles can be bent for petty aims.
We can and must do better. A democracy that manipulates its own foundation is a democracy in peril. A nation that forgets the value of every citizen’s vote risks forgetting the value of the citizen himself.
Chris Mangum is a soldier in the U.S. Army National Guard. He has a Center bias.
Reviewed by News & Bias Analyst Johnathon Held (Lean Right) and News & Bias Analyst Emily Allen (Lean Left).
