The Sundarban
When John Adams wrote in 1776 of his imaginative and prescient for a representative assembly to make laws for the emerging republic, he declared it “have to be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large.”
How exactly to determine on the people’s representatives for the United States’ elected body, Congress, has been a matter of debate nearly ever since. One founder, James Madison, almost misplaced his location within the first Congress because of a rival’s hand in designing Madison’s district. Today, the redrawing of congressional maps to favor a particular party or candidate – known as gerrymandering – dominates the political landscape. President Donald Trump kicked off the fresh partisan battles by encouraging allies in state legislatures to transform maps ahead of the typical redistricting schedule in uncover to favor Republicans, sparking counter-efforts among Democratic lawmakers.
Gerrymandering is anticipated to remain within the spotlight as redistricting efforts face court docket challenges, and as politicians maneuver to status their parties ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. On Nov. 18, a panel of federal judges blocked the current congressional maps Texas drew in August, saying they have been racially gerrymandered. In contrast to partisan gerrymandering, redistricting along racial traces is illegal. The state of Texas has appealed to the Supreme Court. (The excessive court docket will rule this term on a separate case that may consequence in significant partisan redistricting if a key provision of the Balloting Rights Act is struck down.)
Why We Wrote This
Attempts to govern the drawing of congressional districts to profit a party or candidate stretch back nearly to the nation’s founding. This year’s spurt of redistricting has cast renewed passion in what gerrymandering is and the way it really works.
A lawsuit is also challenging California’s current congressional maps. Voters this month temporarily suspended the state’s unbiased redistricting rate in favor of current maps to add five Democratic Residence seats to the state’s delegation. The Justice Department claims the current districts are based on race.
Mr. Trump continues to induce state-level Republicans to redo their maps. This week, he harshly criticized GOP lawmakers in Indiana who dropped their redistricting effort. Six states have changed their congressional maps this year, and at least seven others have regarded as it according to the National Convention of State Legislatures, which notes states have been redistricting this year at “rates not seen for the reason that 1800s.”
Here’s the historical past within the back of the centuries-stale practice, the way it really works, and why it remains a contentious part of U.S. politics.
What are the origins of gerrymandering?
The term “gerrymandering” originated in Massachusetts in 1812. The governor at the time, Elbridge Gerry, signed a invoice allowing for the redrawing of the state’s vote casting districts as a means to be certain his party, the Democratic-Republicans, maintained their energy in future elections.
The Boston Gazette coined the term, pairing the governor’s last name with criticism that the current (and oddly drawn) districts resembled a salamander. Gerry failed to procure reelection that year. Nonetheless, his manipulation of the map allowed the Democratic-Republicans to procure 29 out of 40 seats within the legislature.
Although gerrymandering and redistricting are similar, the 2 are clear. Redistricting is required every decade by Article I, Piece 2 of the Structure to be certain that congressional districts are aligned with population shifts. Gerrymandering is a invent of redistricting with the way of benefiting one candidate or party.
How has gerrymandering been dilapidated within the U.S.?
There are two main methods in which gerrymandering can aid in swinging an election: packing and cracking.
Packing is when supporters of a party or an individual politician are concentrated into a centralized area. Cracking is the alternative: Voters are scattered across a couple of districts with the way of thinning out the opposing party’s impact.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom greets supporters at a rally after voters in his state approved a ballot measure to temporarily redraw California’s congressional districts, in Houston, Nov. 8, 2025.
As the nineteenth century improved, so did gerrymandering. After the Civil War and passage of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing Black men the fair to vote, an aggressive era of gerrymandering began. In Southern states, it became a tactic of racial oppression till the Balloting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited states from discriminating by race all via redistricting.
Diversified outstanding examples of gerrymandering encompass a Nineties redrawing of North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District, known as the “I-85 district” for its line that nearly exactly paralleled the interstate highway, and Maryland’s Third District, which within the 2010s was nicknamed the “praying mantis.”
In fresh decades, growth in skills has created current methods for state lawmakers to pinpoint traces based on vote casting data and mapping software, after generating thousands of potential maps. “The computer has transform integral to the gerrymander,” says Nancy Beck Young, a historian at the College of Houston.
What efforts have been made to counter gerrymandering?
While most states leave redistricting within the hands of politicians, some have made efforts to pass achieve an eye on of the direction of into more neutral hands. In 2000, Arizona was one of the first states to create an unbiased citizen rate to aid in redrawing state legislative districts.
Today, seven states exhaust such commissions for congressional redistricting (with California’s temporarily paused), according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sooner than these efforts, a sequence of U.S. Supreme Court cases rolled out within the 1960s had begun cracking down on gerrymandering in what was called the “Reapportionment Revolution.”
The landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision in Baker v. Carr allowed federal courts to intervene in state appointment disputes. That was adopted in 1964 by Wesberry v. Sanders, which established that congressional districts have to be drawn with roughly equal populations, placing forth the phrase, “one particular person,
