It's one of the darkest arts of electoral politics.
And it’s perfectly legal.
-This is like original sin.
Both sides are infected with it.
Gerrymandering.
It has a surprising history and a contentious future, as
Republicans and Democrats battle over data from the 2020 census to
redraw political maps to their candidates’ advantage.
-The census data is the beginning of redistricting, which is the
beginning of the gerrymandering season.
-What it has become to mean is districts that I don’t like because
somebody else drew them.
The former steel town of Tarentum in western Pennsylvania is a mix of
working-class Republicans and Democrats.
Former Congressman Jason Altmire says that gave him a
close-up view of how gerrymandering works.
-When I was in office, if you lived in this house,
you were my constituent.
But if you lived on this side, your congressman was 60
miles away in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
-It's a small town.
They're in the same school district.
They're one community, except for the fact they
were represented by two different members of Congress.
In the decade after each new census, states redraw their
congressional and legislative districts.
The party in power, whether Republican or Democrat,
typically draws maps to protect its own members.
-Well, if you're right there on that line, on that border, and if it's a
crazy district, it can become very confusing.
-But gerrymandering isn't a partisan problem.
We see this in other states like Maryland where it's been the
Democrats in power and the Democrats drawing the map to
essentially marginalize Republican power.
-Gerrymandering doesn't just determine how many Democrats
and Republicans will serve.
It determines what kind of Democrats
and Republicans.
It contributes to polarization.
It makes the more liberal Democrats
more likely to win.
It makes the more conservative Republicans more likely to win.
And they are less likely to cooperate
with each other, and that gets us to the politics we have now.
-If you're a member of Congress representing that type of district,
you don't hear different points of view.
You hold a town hall meeting and all you ever hear is, right on.
Keep doing what you're doing.
And don't you dare compromise.
Gerrymandering has been around since the 1800s, but perhaps
nowhere has it been more fraught than in North Carolina.
One battle began more than 30 years ago,
when the Supreme Court ruled that the legislature had drawn voting
districts in a way that disadvantaged Black voters.
-And in one unanimous decision today, the court said that
North Carolina's redistricting plan
violated the 1982 Voting Rights Act by
reducing Black voting power.
The court ruled that, under the Voting Rights Act, minority groups
should have the opportunity to elect their preferred
candidates to Congress.
-Need your help!
The remedy?
New majority-minority districts, where minority residents of
voting age made up more than 50 percent of the population.
-In several states, new snake-like district lines were drawn, linking
together small pockets of Black voters.
-I feel like things are changing in the right direction.
-Just want to say hello to you.
I'm running for Congress.
In the 1992 elections, the new majority-minority districts achieved
their goal, and 17 new Black representatives
were elected to Congress.
-The new Congress looks more like America than any other
Congress in history.
-Hello America!
One of them was a North Carolina lawyer and activist
named Eva Clayton.
-From 1901 to 1992, no Afro-American had ever
represented North Carolina.
So that was a beautiful historical moment.
-We too sing America.
-I felt privileged, honored, and I felt humbled and blessed.
But for the Democrats, who controlled the redistricting process
in North Carolina, there was a price to pay.
By packing Black voters into a limited number of districts, there
were fewer Democrats everywhere else.
Republicans saw an opportunity to divide and conquer.
-Let me tell you that the Voting Rights Act has the potential to really
shake things up and, frankly, it is frightening to the Democrats.
-Very quickly, the Republican politicos figured out that if you drew
three minority-majority districts, it meant that there were three incredibly
Democrat districts, which meant there were more Republicans in the
other eight or 10 districts.
-So the Republicans went to the African American community,
largely Democratic, and said, let's make a deal.
-In South Carolina, Blacks and Republicans are already talking
about a crescent-shaped district
through the southern part of the state.
-The alliance when it comes to redistricting between the
Republicans, mostly in the South, and the African Americans, mostly
in the South, has been called “the unholy alliance.”
-The first sign of what a big deal the unholy alliance was
was the 1994 elections.
-We will keep our commitment to keep our half of the contract with
the help of the American people.
-There's a new wind blowing, and it is a majority for Republicans.
-You saw the white Democrats in the South losing seat after seat.
-Voters sweep Democrats from power in midterm elections and give
Republicans control of the House and Senate for the first time in
40 years.
-So it's an irony.
More African American districts meant less
Democrats were elected.
-So it's sort of like taking our fight against racism, and the
advancements we've made and the laws we've used and literally turning
them around on their head and saying, these are the laws you want
and you fought for?
Fine.
We're going to implement them 150 percent
and see if you like that.
-Let me hold the map.
Angela Bryant served in the North Carolina legislature from a carefully
drawn district.
-And what's on the left side is in my district.
It’s one of the few trailer parks that’s still in the city.
After the Supreme Court ruled in Shaw v. Reno in 1993 that
race couldn’t be the predominant factor determining district lines,
drawing districts that would allow a majority of minority voters became
even more complicated.
-It always bothered me, in terms of gerrymandering, that there was
what I call a finger, that scooped down into what was otherwise my
district, that interrupted the compactness, and scooped out the
wealthier households which are more white and Republican.
In a micro sense, both me and my
community benefited from the racial gerrymander, in that I got to
represent them.
However, in the big sense, it rendered us powerless in
that the surrounding white communities and representatives
didn't need us, and they could label our party as the Black party.
In 2017, the courts ruled that Republicans in North Carolina had
packed too many African American voters into too few districts, forcing
them to redraw their maps again.
-North Carolina is really ground zero for gerrymandering.
It was a victory for Democrats, but Angela Bryant decided not to run
for re-election.
-People say, oh they pushed her out.
They didn't push me out.
It's a shift we helped design and we
pushed for.
The Republicans, they said, you realize if you fight this you
lose your district, you know.
And so I’m saying, somehow you're
missing the point.
It's not my district that's important to me.
I'm against racism.
We're insulted to have a district based on racial
discriminatory practices.
With Republicans firmly in charge of mapmaking in many states.
Democratic groups have gone to court over the years,
to challenge gerrymandering
that they feel reduces their voting power.
-Democrats don't like the fact that Republicans took
over a lot of state legislatures.
And, um, what we've seen with Democrats across the country
is to look for boogeymen under every rock they can to explain their
electoral failures.
And of course it is my opinion that Democrats want to
use the courts to do what they can’t
win at the ballot box, and that is elections.
In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts shouldn’t have a role
in determining partisan gerrymandering cases, leaving
those decisions to state courts.
-The long-awaited results of the 2020 census, which will reshape
the balance of power in the United States for the next decade, have
just been released.
Despite calls from both sides to avoid partisan gerrymandering,
legislators in states like Texas want to use the census data to create
more Republican seats in Congress, while Democrats hope to
do the same in states like New York, as control of the House of
Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections
hangs in the balance.
-Here's what the Democrats need to do to fix their problem.
They need to go win people back over in
areas they've lost,
or they need to get the ones they have to move to other places.
-The problem that Democrats have is they have sorted themselves into
like-minded communities, and it makes it very easy to draw lines
that advantage the Republican Party because you can put all the
Democrats into one single area, and that's not something that's
going to change.
That's a social trend that is greater and more
impactful than just gerrymandering.
-In a democracy, what we have as a final tool are our votes.
That's how people express themselves.
50 years ago, before the days of majority-minority districts,
Eva Clayton ran for Congress and lost.
-When you find people who are in tears because you lost, then you
know that you have not only stirred the emotions, but also the hope.
Today, the former congresswoman feels that a minority candidate could
run and appeal to everyone, even as she says gerrymandering by
both parties has skewed the electoral process.
-There ought to be some line that you don't cross.
How far would you go to control?
Taking the advantage of the election is expected, but the
prize of winning also has within it core responsibility — fairness and
respect for the rule of law.