There are some things in life that Canada is just better at. Poutine, for instance.
Being polite. Appreciating Robin Sparkles. And these days, elections. America does something
very weird in its elections. The way elections are supposed to work is voters choose their
politicians. But in America, politicians often get to choose their voters. The word gerrymandering
comes from Eldrige Gerry, he was Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812. After
he took office, his party redrew the map of the state's senate districts in a shockingly
partisan manner. The aim was to help his party win as many elections as possible by creating
as many districts as they could where at least 51% of the voters would favor Gerry's allies.
And that's basically what Gerrymandering is. We've got 435 Congressional districts in this
country. Somebody needs to divide them up. And amazingly, most states let politicians
divide them up. The results are totally predictable. You can see how this works in North Carolina.
Democrats won 50.5% of the House vote in 2012, but Republicans won 9 House seats to the Democrats'
4. If you want to see why, just look at the map. Look at District #4. It kind of looks
like two legs running away from this whole mess. Look at District #9, which is getting
punched in the neck by District #5 and kicked in the gut by District #12. And damn, look
at District #12. It's like a little worm, wriggling away from North Carolina. These
districts may look weird, but they're what political scientists call "efficient." They
cluster the state's Democratic voters into a few districts where they have huge majorities,
and they spread the state's Republican voters into more districts where they have slimmer
majorities. So in District #12, the Democrat won by almost 60%. No Republican won a district
by more than 30%. That meant that they could win more districts and more House seats in
total. And that's what happens when you let politicians choose their voters. This is how
Canada did it too, but then in the 1960s, they took the power away from partisan politicians
and gave it to independent commissions. America could do this too if it wanted, and then we
could stop feeling bad about how much better Canada is at elections, and instead feel good
that we get to wear such a nice, polite country as a hat.
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