Gerrymandering in the United States

Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was coined in 1812 after a review of the redistricting maps of Massachusetts set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a mythical salamander. In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census. It defines geographical boundaries, with each district within a state being geographically contiguous and having about the same number of state voters. The resulting map affects the elections of the state's members of the United States House of Representatives and the state legislative bodies. Redistricting has always been regarded as a political exercise. In most states, it is controlled by state legislatures and sometimes the governor. In some states the governor has no veto power over redistricting legislation, while in some states the veto override threshold is a simple majority. In some states, an independent commission is tasked with drawing district boundaries. When one party controls the state's legislative bodies and governor's office, it is in a strong position to gerrymander district boundaries to advantage its side and to disadvantage its political opponents. Since 2010, detailed maps and high-speed computing have facilitated gerrymandering by political parties in the redistricting process in order to gain control of the state legislature and congressional representation and potentially to maintain that control over several decades, even against shifting political changes in a state's population. The Supreme Court of the United States has often struggled when partisan gerrymandering occurs such as in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) and Gill v. Whitford (2018). Typical gerrymandering cases in the United States take the form of partisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at favoring one political party while weakening another; bipartisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at protecting incumbents by multiple political parties; and racial gerrymandering, which is aimed at maximizing or minimizing the impact of certain racial groups. In the past, federal courts have deemed extreme cases of gerrymandering to be unconstitutional, but have struggled with how to define the types of gerrymandering and the standards that should be used to determine which redistricting maps are unconstitutional. In 1995 the Supreme Court came to a 5–4 decision during Miller v. Johnson that racial gerrymandering is a violation of constitutional rights and upheld decisions against redistricting that is purposely devised based on race. Racial gerrymandering effectively maximizes or minimizes the impact of racial minority votes in certain districts. Racial gerrymandering may be created without considerations of party lines but often redraw or reconstruct districts in ways that limit minority voters to smaller or a reduced number of districts. The effect of the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the rapid improvement of technology and the influx of dark money into redistricting are also possible factors that may impact the voting power of minorities. A 5–4 decision by the court in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), stated that questions of gerrymandering represented a nonjusticiable political question which could not be dealt with by the federal court system and ultimately left it back to states and to Congress to develop remedies to challenge and to prevent gerrymandering.