They got a quick minute I I really
want to discuss and stay with me here.
OK, gerrymandering for just a moment.
It's when you mix a Gary and
a salamander right does that?
Does that make sense?
See the term actually comes from
Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gary,
a founding father,
who decided to dramatically redraw
the Senate districts in 1810 to
weaken the opposing Federalist party.
And when he was all done,
one of the districts was mocked in
the press because of its odd shape.
That was clearly a political tactic.
This is a picture from the Boston Sentinel.
In 1812, some people said that
it was shaped like a salamander,
and since the media needs everything
to be catchy and dramatic,
they called the tactic.
Gary Mandering and overtime people
just started referring to it as
gerrymandering because, well,
I don't know.
But now you can be that annoying
guy at the party who says actually
it's pronounced Gary Mandering
You might be thinking,
why would anybody be talking
about that at a party and now you
just sound like my wife on our
drive home from most parties.
But I digress and I'm going to hand
over the explanation to Professor
Jim Moore at Pacific University.
I was
hoping you could explain gerrymandering
in in a simple way to people who might
hear the term recognize the term,
but not quite understand what it entails.
So a gerrymander is
manipulating the district.
So that they keep the people you
want to be together together or
exclude people from a district.
In Oregon, we do a little
bit of gerrymandering,
but nothing like we see in
other parts of the country now.
I thought gerrymandering was illegal.
You can manipulate the districts,
but the Supreme Court has said
the only reason you can do that
is for racial or ethnic reasons.
I mean, so it prevents people.
For instance, for making districts
where an African American
community of black community,
for instance, might be split,
so there's no chance for a
black person to win to be the
representative from that district.
So that's the only thing
you can take into account.
You cannot explicitly cannot take
into account party registration
when you make districts,
and yet it seems that everybody does
it in every state in the country.
OK, so there are rules and also plenty
of Gray area which is why everyone
is always accusing the other side
of gerrymandering and why everyone
is always kind of right because they
probably are gerrymandering at least
a little bit now right now this is
the new map proposed by Democrats and
according to 538 it favors Democrats,
which isn't really hard to do in Oregon
because we have lots of Democrats.
Now this is the map proposed by
Republicans which is more of a 5050
kind of thing which sounds fair, right?
But it's actually favoring Republicans
because the state isn't 5050.
The most recent map is
in contention right now.
The Republicans are accusing
the Democrats of gerrymandering.
Given what you can see there,
do you think they have a case?
They have a small case.
The problems that the Republicans
face is that when you look
at the number of Republicans
versus Democrats in this state,
it's a three to two margin for the Democrats.
And the population growth in the state
has taken place where the Democrats live.
There are more Democrats than
there were ten years ago,
proportionately more than the
Republicans grew during that same time.
So the Republicans
have countered with a map of their own.
What is your take on on that map?
The Republican map for the Congress
and for the legislature is designed
so that the Republicans who have
relatively fewer people you look
at Democrats and Republicans.
It's a three to two relationship three
Democrats for every two Republicans.
It makes it so that the Republicans end up
with half of the congressional districts,
and they would probably move towards
about half of the seats in the
legislature in the Senate and the House,
so they would be over represented.
If the Republican maps were
approved, which is probably one
of the first factors they look
at when considering if a map has
been gerrymandered.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
OK, yeah, I know it's all very riveting.
I understand I fully understand.
I also while the 19th century media
drew pictures of Dragons on maps
like cartographers in Middle-earth,
because a topic like this,
it needs a little pizzazz.
We need to spice it up just a bit,
but you have to understand that these
maps are a key part of representation.
They're very, very important,
and they're at least something
that you should understand.
So if you have questions, please let me know.
Use that hashtag. Hey Dan.