Gerrymandering: The Great American Evil
Article by Hayden Hradek, TPT Staff Writer
Gerrymandering is uniquely evil. Merriam-Webster defines gerrymandering as the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections. Gerrymandering represents all that is wrong in the current political system, after all, I should know, I live in a gerrymandered district. Going to a state scale, I am from Southwest Missouri, residing in the Republic. Looking at the picture above, you’ll notice a hole within Greene County. This hole is the city of Springfield. Springfield and the rest of Southwest Missouri lie in the traditional “Bible Belt”, and maintain a dark red fixture, except for one spot. In that hole lies the blue city of Springfield. The city contains three college campuses, a community college, and a high population of poverty. Because of the high population of blue voters in the city of Springfield, a glaring hole remains in the State Senate’s 20th district map. So, with this personal example of living in gerrymandering, how do we move forward to end the practice?
The first way is to eliminate the involvement of self-interested politicians in the mapping process. One of the most simple pieces of human nature is the self-interest principle. That a person, no matter what, will do what it takes to service, and will do what is in their own best interest. For politicians, that is staying in office. Taking the current example of Missouri District 20, if the senator saw a growing population of Springfieldians voting blue, it would be their best practice to remove them from their voting group. If these politicians are drawn out of the process of drawing maps, the principal will leave with it.
Next, mandates regarding continuous districts are critical to the mapping process. In other words, all districts must be continuous through counties, and should not be carved out. You can see what this means in the picture of Missouri Senate District 20. Counties Barton, Dade, Greene, and Webster are all in a line, thus the district follows the natural distribution and maps them together. However, districts removing pieces of the map directly gerrymander the district and limit the power of a voter.
Our founding fathers never imagined what gerrymandering is today. The fact of the matter is, that politicians are using their pencils to draw away the power of the modern voter. And that is a truly evil crime.
Sources:
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3992810-theres-only-one-way-to-fix-gerrymandering-and-its-not-through-the-courts/
https://themissouritimes.com/primary-previews-senate-district-20/