- [Instructor] What we see here are two maps
of congressional districts.
On the left we see some congressional districts
in and around Austin, Texas.
This black line shows us Travis County
where Austin, Texas is.
And on this right map we see the congressional districts
in and around Chicago, Illinois.
What I'd like you to do is pause this video
and see if you see anything interesting
about the shapes of these congressional districts.
Well some things might immediately jump out at you.
Here in Chicago, Illinois, this fourth district
in particular seems kind of fishy.
It's often known as the earmuff district.
It has this northern part and this southern part,
and then it's actually connected just by an interstate,
not by the things on either side of that interstate.
So that doesn't seem like a natural shape
for a congressional district.
And then here in Austin, Texas,
you see that the votes in Travis County
are split amongst many congressional districts.
And so the question that should be surfacing
in your brain is,
why are these districts shaped that way?
And the answer that many people will give you
is it's because of a gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering,
which is the idea of shaping districts
to benefit one political party or another.
Every 10 years there's a U.S. Census,
and based on that census, different states will
might get a few more representatives
or a few less representatives,
and so state legislatures will often have to redistrict.
And so that's when this occurs.
And so the first question you might ask is,
well that's a very strange word,
where does it come from?
And that goes all the way back to 1812
when the then governor of Massachusetts,
Elbridge Gerry, Gerry was how you pronounced his name
although now it's gerrymandering.
He decided to sign the bill that would reapportion
the state senate districts.
And you have this one really strangely shaped district
right over here that people said hey that looks
like a salamander.
And so they created a portmanteau which is really
just a combination of words around Elbridge Gerry
and the back half of salamander.
So you have gerrymander,
which is creating these districts to advantage
one party or the other.
Elbridge Gerry did it for the Democratic Republican party
against the Federalist,
but now it's Republicans versus Democrats.
So now let's go back to the two districts
that we looked at and think about what are
the implications of it?
Who will, who does the gerrymandering benefit?
So in the case of Austin, Texas,
Austin, Texas is an urban area.
Urban areas tend to lean more left.
And it does lean more Democratic.
It's actually more liberal than most urban areas in Texas.
But it's surrounded by more rural areas
that lean right.
And so it would be advantageous and it is advantageous
for Republicans to split those Democratic votes
amongst these Republican districts.
In the case of Chicago, it's a little bit less obvious.
This type of gerrymandering was done
by a Democratic legislature,
but it's a little bit less obvious what's going on
here with the fourth district
because it is actually surrounded by districts
represented by Democrats.
What you need to appreciate is when this gerrymandering
is done it's often done by sophisticated computer algorithms
and there's all sorts of implications
of stretching one district or another.
This is just one tactic that you see here
is taking a bunch of Democratic votes
and diluting them amongst a bunch of Republican districts.
You might see it the other way.
You could have situations where you redistrict
so that an incumbent no longer lives in their district
and so they wouldn't be the incumbent anymore.
You might see redistricting to force two incumbents
to go against each other.
You might see redistricting where you're collecting
pockets from certain constituencies so that
you can make a district so that they would
have representation and that's the one
that's often cited for the district four right over here.
Because these are heavily Hispanic areas
around or in Chicago.
Now I'll leave you with a newspaper article
from the Salem Gazette in 1813
that talks about at least how the Federalists felt
about that first official gerrymandering.
This is in response to Elbridge Gerry's signing of the bill
to allow for that salamander shaped district
that advantaged the Democratic Republicans
against the Federalists.
Federalists, followers of Washington.
Again behold and shudder at the exhibition
of this terrific dragon,
brought forth to swallow and devour your liberties
and equal rights.
You can see in the picture it actually does
look like a dragon, they put wings on it.
Unholy party spirit and inordinate love of power
gave it birth.
Your patriotism and hatred of tyranny
must by one vigorous struggle strangle it
in its infancy.
The iniquitous law which cut up and severed
this Commonwealth into districts is kindred
to the arbitrary deeds of Napoleon
when he partitioned the territories of innocent nations
to suit his sovereign will.
You gotta remember this is right around the time
of Napoleon conquering much of Europe.
This law inflicted a grievous wound on the Constitution.
It in fact subverts and changes our form of government,
which ceases to be Republican as long as an aristocratic
House of Lords under the form of a Senate
tyrannizes over the people and silences and stifles
the voice of the majority.
And then it goes on to say,
will you then permit a party to disfranchise the people,
to convert the Senate chamber into a fortress
in which ambitious office-seekers may entrench themselves
and set at defiance the frowns of the people?
No, this usurping faction must be dislodged
from its stronghold.