Gerrymandering

Introduction
According to the Thesaurus dictionary meaning, Gerrymandering can be defined as the
dividing of state, county etc into election districts so as to give one political party a majority
in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of other party into as few districts as
possible.
This term has its origins in the U.S. Political system and is named after the Governor of
Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, in 1812, who signed a bill creating a partisan district in the
Boston area that was composed of the shape of a salamander(mythological character). Thus,
Gerrymander is a portmanteau of the governor’s last name and the word salamander.
In political terms, Gerrymandering is when a political group tries to change a voting
district to create a result that helps them or hurts the group who is against them.
Gerrymandering works by wasting votes. It works by spreading the votes from the districts
that the party is sure they will win to districts that they have a 50-50 chance of winning, thus,
increasing the probability of their win by spreading their voter electorate. In simple terms, it
works by putting more votes of already winning districts into various districts so the other
party do not win in more than the districts dominated by them.
This is a practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or
group by manipulating district boundaries with the resulting district being called a
gerrymander, which is most commonly used in first-past-the-post electoral systems.
Gerrymandering is the most rampant in first-past-the-post electoral systems which is being
followed in majority of countries around the world. It is a simple system where the country is
divided into several voting districts and the candidate who wins the maximum votes in a
district wins the district. In this system, all the votes that do not go to the winning candidate
are irrelevant to the composition of the new government. Partisan redrawing of district lines
is extremely harmful for the democratic principles and results in a highly polarised form of
democracy as a large part of the constituency is not represented in policy making.
Gerrymandering is a tactic used to protect incumbents or the current holder of the office.
A very poetic description of Gerrymandering was given by Wayne Dawkings who described
it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.

Visual description of Gerrymandering

In Washington Post’s article titled ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ a simple visual description
of this complicated term was provided.
Gerrymandering involves the drawing of legislative districts being handled by state
legislatures. That creates a strong incentive for partisan lawmakers to draw districts in a way
that benefits their own party. Here’s how it works.
Suppose we have a very small state with just 50 people. Thirty of them belong to the Blue
Party while the rest align with the Red Party. For the purposes of our illustration, they happen
to live in a nice orderly grid, with Blues on one side of the state and Reds on the other.
Now, let’s say the mapmaker is tasked with drawing five equal population districts. The
voters in each district will send one representative to the Legislature/Parliament. The simplest
way to do this would be to draw nice long districts, as in Option 1 above. That creates three
Blue-only districts and two that are all Red. The state ends up sending two Red Party and
three Blue Party representatives to the Houses, perfectly representing the state’s partisan split.
But let’s say the mapmaker is a member of the Blue Party and realizes that all five districts
can be drawn in a way that gives Blue voters the majority in each one. The Election Day
plays out leaving the state without a single Red representative. Option 2 shows how a
majority party can use gerrymandering to dilute the political power of the minority.
But what if the mapmaker is a member of the Red Party? With some creative geometry, the
line drawer can create three districts with a majority of Red voters, and two that are mostly
Blues. That gives us Option 3, showing how a minority party can actually give itself a
majority of seats if it controls the redistricting process.
Most of the gerrymandering that people get upset about is of the Option 3 variety. An
example of this can be the gerrymandering done by the Republican Party in USA after the
2010 Census in the last redistricting cycle. In some states, like Pennsylvania and North
Carolina, Republicans were able to draw districts that gave them majorities in terms of house
representatives, despite winning only a minority of votes state-wide. In 2012 elections in
Pennsylvania, for instance, Republicans garnered only 49 percent of the votes statewide in
U.S. House races but captured 13 of the 18 House seats.

The other Democratic party in USA, even though was in control of limited districting
statehouses still managed to gerrymander the state of Maryland. In 2016, Republicans won
37 percent of the statewide House popular vote, which would be translated into just one of
the state’s eight House seats, but as option 3 (above) indicates, Democrats used their craft and
created convoluted district boundaries which involved attempts to grab one group of voters
from far away towards another group or exclude the group that is nearby. Thus, even though,
all types of gerrymandering is unfair, the option 3 form of gerrymandering is the most drastic.

Gerrymandering by Democrats in Maryland

Tactics
The primary goal of gerrymandering is to maximize the effect of supporters' votes and to
minimize the effect of opponents' votes.
This can be accomplished through a number of ways:
 Cracking - This involves spreading voters of a particular type among many districts
in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district.
Political parties in charge of redrawing district lines may create more "cracked"
districts as a means of retaining, and possibly even expanding, their legislative
power. It is ensured that the opponent’s voters are not packed in a majority in any
 particular district. An example would be to split the voters in a single urban area
among several districts and combining the central and suburban areas into one
constituency as it is assumed that the party’s major support is from the suburban base
and would help them in winning the elections.
 Packing - It involves concentrating as many voters of one type into a single electoral
district to reduce their influence in other districts. This can also be disguised as a
way to obtain representation of a community of common interest, in order to create
a majority-minority district.
When the party controlling the districting process has a statewide majority, the minority party
is generally cracked everywhere. Whereas ‘Packing’ is more likely to be used for partisan
advantage when the party controlling the districting process has a statewide minority, as by
forfeiting a few districts packed with the opposition, the remaining districts can either be
cracked or won directly for the minority party
 Hijacking - redraws two districts in such a way as to force two incumbents or
dominating groups to run against each other in one district, ensuring that one of
them will be eliminated.
 Kidnapping – Involves moving an incumbent's home address into another
district. Re-election can become more difficult when the incumbent no longer resides
in the district. This is often employed against politicians who represent urban areas, in
which larger cities will be removed from the district in order to make the district more
rural.
These tactics are typically combined in some form during the redistricting process which
ultimately results in creation of a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to
secure more seats and greater representation for voters of another type. This results in
candidates of one party (the one responsible for the gerrymandering) winning by small
majorities in most of the districts, and another party winning by a large majority in
only a few of the districts.

Effects
Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect. Wasted votes are votes that
did not contribute to electing a candidate, either because they were in excess of the bare
minimum needed for victory or because the candidate lost. By moving geographic
boundaries, the incumbent party packs opposition voters into a few districts they will already
win, wasting the extra votes. Other districts are more tightly constructed with the opposition
party allowed a bare minority count, thereby wasting all the minority votes for the losing
candidate. These districts are drawn to produce a result favouring the incumbent party. The
wasted vote effect is strongest when a party wins by narrow margins across multiple
districts.
Gerrymandering can be quantitatively measured via the efficiency gap, computed from the
difference in the wasted votes for two different political parties summed over all the districts.
Effect on electoral competition
Some political science researches suggest that gerrymandering does not decrease electoral
competition, and can even increase it. Some say that, rather than packing the voters of their
party into uncompetitive districts, party leaders tend to prefer to spread their party's voters
into multiple districts, so that their party can win a larger number of races. This may lead to
increased competition.
Even though this may be true for some cases, but most times the incumbent party prepares
carefully detailed strategies which enables them to win the electorate with considerable
ease and without much competition.
Increased incumbent advantage and campaign costs
The effect of gerrymandering for incumbents is almost always advantageous, as incumbents
are far more likely to be re-elected under conditions of gerrymandering.
Incumbents are likely to be of the majority party orchestrating a gerrymander, and this result
in them being easily renominated in subsequent elections.
Gerrymandering can affect campaign costs for district elections. If districts become
increasingly stretched out, candidates must pay increased costs for transportation to carry out
their campaign. The incumbent's advantage in securing campaign funds is another benefit of
his or her having a gerrymandered secure seat.
This demonstrates that gerrymandering can have a deleterious effect on the principle of
democratic accountability. With uncompetitive seats/districts reducing the fear that
incumbent politicians may lose office, they have less incentive to represent the interests of
their constituents, even when those interests conform to majority support for an issue across
the electorate as a whole. Incumbent politicians may look out more for their party's interests
than for those of their constituents.
Less descriptive representation
Gerrymandering may be advocated to improve representation within the legislature among
otherwise underrepresented minority groups by packing them into a single district. This can
be controversial, as it may lead to those groups' remaining marginalized in the
government as they become confined to a single district. Candidates outside that district
no longer need to represent them to win elections. This, in turn, hinders the entire
demographic aspect of the country.
As an example, much of the redistricting conducted in the United States in the early 1990s
involved the intentional creation of additional "majority-minority" districts where racial
minorities such as African Americans were packed together. Their representatives were
then elected as minority representatives from the Democratic Party from these constituencies,
who then had safe seats.
 The massive problem of gerrymandering in USA
The 2012 election in USA provides a number of examples as to how partisan gerrymandering
can adversely affect the descriptive function of states' delegations. In Pennsylvania, for
example, Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 83,000 more
votes than Republican candidates, yet the Republican-controlled redistricting process in 2010
resulted in Democrats losing to their Republican counterparts in 13 out of Pennsylvania's 18
districts.
Another example of Northern Ireland can be taken, where the boundaries were constructed
to guarantee Protestant Unionist majorities.
This kind of disproportional representation of the public will seems to be problematic for
the legitimacy of democratic systems, and is responsible for drastic election outcomes.
Prison-based gerrymandering
Prison-based gerrymandering occurs when prisoners are counted as residents of a
particular district, increasing the district's population. Although many prisoners come from
(and return to) other communities, they are counted as "residents" of the districts that contain
large prisons, thereby artificially inflating the political representation in districts with
prisons at the expense of voters in all other districts without prisons. Others contend that
prisoners should not be counted as residents of their prison-resident districts when they do not
reside there and are not legally eligible to vote

Remedies
Due to the perceived issues associated with gerrymandering and its effect on competitive
elections and democratic accountability, numerous countries have enacted reforms making
the malpractice of gerrymandering either more difficult or less effective. Countries such as
the U.K., Australia, Canada and most of those in Europe have transferred responsibility for
defining constituency boundaries to neutral/non partisan bodies or independent
commissions. In Spain, the constituents are constitutionally fixed since 1978.
Redistricting by a neutral or cross party agency
This is the most commonly advocated electoral reform targeted to reduce the effects of
gerrymandering by changing the redistricting process. Under these proposals, an
independent and presumably objective commission is created specifically for redistricting,
rather than having the legislature do it. The first priority is ensuring competitive districts
termed as ‘reverse gerrymander’ by researchers. A complex mathematical formula is used to
determine the competitiveness of each district.
This is the system used in the United Kingdom, where the independent boundary
commissions determine the boundaries for constituencies in the House of Commons and are
further subject to ratification by the body (almost always granted without debate). A similar
situation exists in Australia where the independent Australian Electoral Commission and its
state-based counterparts determine electoral boundaries for federal, state and local
jurisdictions.
To help ensure neutrality, members of a redistricting agency may be appointed from
relatively apolitical sources such as retired judges or longstanding members of the civil
service, sometimes providing adequate representation among competing political parties.
Additionally, members of the board can be denied access to information that might aid in
gerrymandering, such as the demographic makeup or voting patterns of the population,
location of incumbents etc.
As a further constraint, consensus requirements can be imposed to ensure that the resulting
district map reflects a wider perception of fairness, such as a requirement for a
supermajority approval of the commission for any district proposal. Consensus
requirements, however, can lead to deadlock, the equally numbered partisan appointees of all
the parties were unable to reach consensus in a reasonable time, and consequently the courts
had to determine district lines.
In the USA, the Legislative Services Bureau(LSB) responsible for demarcating district lines
ensures satisfying the federally mandated contiguity and population equality criteria.
Transparency regulations
A 2012 investigation by The Centre for Public Integrity reviewed every state's redistricting
processes for both transparency and potential for public input, and ultimately assigned 24
states grades of either D or F. Thus, the need for transparency in redistricting process is clear
and obvious.
Redistricting Transparency Acts have been employed and such policy proposals aim to
increase the transparency and responsiveness of the redistricting systems. The merit of
increasing transparency in redistricting processes ensures that lawmakers would be less
inclined to draw gerrymandered districts if they were forced to defend such districts in a
public forum.
Changing the voting system
As gerrymandering relies on the wasted-vote effect, the use of a different voting system
with fewer wasted votes can help reduce gerrymandering.
The alternatives can be the use of multi-member districts as well as voting systems
establishing proportional representation and mechanisms like single transferable voting
can reduce wasted votes and gerrymandering. Electoral reformers have advocated all three as
replacement systems.
Electoral systems with various forms of proportional representation are now found in nearly
all European countries, resulting in multi-party systems and large number of party
representation in the parliament. This has also led to a higher voter attendance in the
elections, fewer or no wasted votes, and a wider variety of political opinions represented.
In these systems, if the party that gets, for example, 30 percent of the votes gets roughly 30
percent of the seats in the legislature.
“Electoral systems with election of just one winner in each district and no proportional
representation according to votes tend to create two-party systems.” In these, just two parties
effectively compete in the national elections and thus the national political discussions are
forced into a narrow two-party frame. These first-past-the-post voting systems are the most
vulnerable to gerrymandering.
Changing the size of districts and the elected body
If a semi-proportional or first-past-the-post voting system is used then increasing the
number of winners in any given district will reduce the number of wasted votes. This can
be accomplished by either merging separate districts together and by increasing the total size
of the body to be elected. Since gerrymandering relies on exploiting the wasted vote effect,
increasing the number of winners per district can reduce the potential for gerrymandering in
these systems. However, this method cannot eliminate gerrymandering entirely.
In my opinion, this method can make gerrymandering even easier than earlier by merging
districts with similar groups and producing landslide victories from these districts for those
groups. This phenomenon can again lead to block voting and further may lead to more wasted
votes as well as denying the particular group more representation. Even if we increase the
size of elected body from districts, the opposition groups could be packed together and this
would again lead to them having low representation
Using fixed districts
Another way to avoid gerrymandering is simply to stop redistricting altogether and use
existing political boundaries such as state, county, or provincial lines as permanent/fixed
boundaries. While this prevents future gerrymandering, any existing advantage may
become deeply ingrained.
The United States Senate, for instance, has more competitive elections than the House of
Representatives due to the use of existing/fixed state borders rather than gerrymandered
districts.
The use of fixed districts creates an additional problem, however, in that fixed districts do
not take into account changes in population. This greatly affects representation after long
periods of time or large population movements.
In the U.S. the state legislature of Alabama refused to redistrict for more than 60 years,
despite major changes in population patterns. By 1960 less than a quarter of the state's
population controlled the majority of seats in the legislature
Objective rules to create districts
Another means to reduce gerrymandering is to create objective, precise criteria to which all
the district map must comply.
This involves using the same metrics that maximize compactness to create metrics that
minimize the efficiency gap. Neither of these metrics take into consideration other electoral
goals such as proportional representation based on other demographic characteristics (such as
race, ethnicity, gender, or income), maximizing competitiveness of elections, avoiding splits
of existing government units (like cities and counties), and ensuring representation of major
interest groups (like farmers or voters in a specific transportation corridor), though any of
these could be incorporated into a more complicated metric.
The three primary methods to create objective districts are -
1. Minimum district to convex polygon ratio
2. Shortest split line algorithm
3. Efficiency gap calculation
Note – I could explain these algorithms but it would increase the already large assignment to
a certain 3-4 pages more.
Use of databases and computer technology
The introduction of modern computers alongside the development of elaborate voter
databases and special districting software has made gerrymandering a far more precise
science. Using such databases, political parties can obtain detailed information about every
household including political party registration, previous campaign donations, and the
number of times residents voted in previous elections and can further predict the voting
behaviour of people with astonishing degree of precision leaving little chance for creation of
competitive districts.
But if this data was put to a better use in which the politicians and legislative bodies won’t
have access to it then it could turn out to be a pretty fruitful measure to take in all the possible
consideration required for a competitive district as well as for fulfilling the electoral goals.
Further online apps such as Dave's Redistricting have allowed users to simulate
redistricting states into legislative districts as they wish. This software was designed to "put
power in people's hands," and so that they "can see how the process works” and remove the
shroud behind its secrecy.

Examples of Gerrymandering in countries –

Gerrymandering in India
Gerrymandering in India for political gain is virtually impossible to do. India being a
parliamentary democracy, the Indian system works in a way that equitable power is allotted
to each state per capita, that is, that the number of Lok Sabha seats allotted to a state remains
constant for each state according to its proportion of population.
The district boundaries in India are decided by the Delimitation Commission of India under
the Delimitation Commission of India Act. The commission decides the boundaries of a
district with each recent census and cannot change the number of seats each state has in the
Lok Sabha. This commission is further headed by non-partisan agents like retired chief
justices and has no political involvement in their appointments. These agents are appointed
by The President of India who acts as a rubber stamp on the recommendation made by the
commission. This system makes the entire process air tight and insulated from any political
influence.
However, according to my point of view, the political parties in India, instead of focusing on
shifting the boundaries, shift the popular mood of the electorate by shift in the
population, which in effect is similar to gerrymandering in some way.
Take Delhi as example, in state as well as assembly elections held in this year and the year
before, parties were trying to calculate where they could win majorities and certain seats for
their campaign. One party tries to consolidate its votes in a few regions which give them at
least a surety to win a specific number of seats (Similar to ‘packing’ tactics). The other party
tries to spread itself thin and trying to distribute its votes from high margin winning areas to
neighbouring areas where they may put up a fight, a tactic similar to ‘cracking’. (Since it is
majorly a two party system prevailing in India, inspite of being a multi party democracy)
Further ‘hijacking’ tactic is also quite prevalent in India, though not in the gerrymandering
format. Parties try to polarise votes in a district by taking advantage of the competition
among two parties, which often results in votes being wasted or cut out and the winner is a
member of the third party.
Even though the political parties engage in these malapportionment practises, it is safe to
assume that from a neutral outsider basis, due to India having a centralised system, with
checks via the executive, gerrymandering does not exist in India.
Gerrymandering in other First World Countries –
Australia
In Australia, a similar term to gerrymandering was established called ‘Bjelkemandering’ from
the name of the premier Sir John Bjelke-Peterson who was the premier of Queensland state in
1970s and 1980s which witnessed gerrymandering at a large scale.

Under the system, electoral boundaries were drawn so that rural electorates had as few as
half as many voters as metropolitan ones and regions with high levels of support for the
opposition Labor Party were concentrated into fewer electorates, allowing Bjelke-Petersen's
National Party led Coalition government to remain in power despite attracting less than
50% of the vote. In the 1986 election, for example, the National Party received 39.64% votes
and won 49 seats in the 89 seat Parliament, whilst the Labor Opposition received 41.35% but
won only 30 seats.
Canada
In Canada, gerrymandering is mainly prevalent at the civic level where the regulations of city
wards made by the independent agencies are overruled by the city councils. This creates a
conflict of interest in the neighbourhood which is not homogenous and has sharply
different opinions about city policy direction.
France
France is one of the few countries that allow redrawing of districts by the legislatures
without any check. The legislatures set up an executive commission which involves
members from differing parties.
In France, Gerrymandering is particularly used to counter the communist influence. The
redrawing of the districts is mainly done by the conservative governments. In the 1993
elections, Charles Pasqua of the conservative party carried out gerrymandering in such a way
that even after winning 58% of the votes, the party won 80% of the seats.
Gerrymandering in France is also done against regionalist parties. Départements are always
used even if they split urban areas or larger identity territories in order to reduce the influence
of the regional parties.
Germany
When the electoral districts in Germany were redrawn in 2000, the ruling center-left Social
Democratic Party was accused of gerrymandering to marginalize the left-wing PDS
party. The SPD combined traditional PDS strongholds in eastern Berlin with new districts
made up of more populous areas of western Berlin, where the PDS had very limited
following.
After having won four seats in Berlin in the 1998 national election, the PDS was able to
retain only two seats altogether in the 2002 elections.
Gerrymandering in Third World Countries –
Kuwait
From the years 1981 until 2005, Kuwait was divided into 25 electoral districts. In July 2005,
a new law for electoral reforms were approved which cut the number of electoral districts
from 25 to 5. The government of Kuwait found that 5 electoral districts resulted in a powerful
parliament with an increasing competition. A new law was crafted by the government of
Kuwait and signed by the Amir to gerrymander the districts to 10 allowing the government's
supporters to regain the majority
Malaysia
The practice of gerrymandering has been around in the country since its independence in
1957. The ruling coalition Barisan Nasional has been accused of controlling the election
commission by revising the boundaries of constituencies. During the 13th General Election in
2013, Barisan Nasional won 60% of the seats in the Malaysian Parliament despite only
receiving 47% of the popular vote
Singapore
In recent decades, critics have accused the ruling People's Action Party of unfair electoral
practices including gerrymandering to maintain significant majorities in the Parliament of
Singapore. The Elections Department was established as part of the executive branch
under the Prime Minister of Singapore, rather than as an independent body. Critics
have accused it of giving the ruling party the power to decide polling districts and polling
sites through electoral engineering, based on poll results in previous elections.

Conclusion
Thus, with this assignment, we can conclude that the term gerrymandering has negative
connotations and is almost always considered a corruption of the democratic process.
Though we see earlier that there are states in countries that have the legislatures carrying the
task of redistricting for elections with multiple parties in question working in a pact to ensure
no unfair advantage, however, there are sufficient examples to prove that “Gerrymandering is
wrong and all the parties are guilty”
The tactic and consequential effects of gerrymandering demonstrate that it does have a
deleterious effect on the principle of democratic accountability. Another example of this
can be that uncompetitive seats/districts created via gerrymandering reduce the fear that
incumbent politicians may lose office which results in them having less incentive to represent
the interests of their constituents, even when those interests conform to a majority of the
electorate. These incumbent politicians start to look out more for their party's interests than
for those of their constituents.
This most devastating consequence of the redistricting procedure is the usage of the tactic to
deliberately marginalize minority populations and restrict them from gaining access to
congressional representation.
Thus, according to me redistricting is and will always be a deeply political process, with
incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves or to gain additional seats for
their party. We have seen enough real life examples in politics to know that backchanneling
is real and exists in politics to a great extent which would ultimately result in some
catastrophic failure of democratic regime of a country at the expanse of a ‘co-operative
redistricting process’.
The countries all over the world have seen the devastating effect of gerrymandering at the
electoral front and have made attempts to reduce or eliminate the use redistricting as a
political weapon. They have done so by adopting the strategy of setting up of bipartisan
independent commissions who carry out redistricting.
In California, after intense Gerrymandering strategies(even after setting up of a bipartisan
commission) by the ruling political party resulted in them gaining continuous victories in the
elections for over 10 years even after getting less proportionate votes, the voters of the state
carried out a referendum against this obvious gerrymandering practise and decided to take the
power to redraw district lines from the Redistricting Commission. This resulted in creation of
more competitive districts as well as the loss of the ruling party.

Gerrymandered districts in California

References
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/27/what-is-gerrymandering-why-is-it-
problematic/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
https://www.bbc.com/new/world-asia/gerrymandering
https://www.britannica.com/thesaurus/gerrymandering
https://www.nytimes.com/what-is-gerrymandering
https://www.fairvote.org/gerrymandering
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/gerrymandering
https://www.slate.com/new/gerrymandering
https://www.vox.com/how-gerrymandering-works
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/ascade
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/gerrymandering