Gerrymandering is the root of everything wrong
in American politics --
true or false?
If you ask both Republicans and Democrats, many will say true.
I mean, there's a reason the Supreme Court
is taking up multiple cases challenging it.
Right?
But what if the problem isn't gerrymandering itself?
It's how it's done.
This is the Earmuff District.
It looks like earmuffs.
That's Nick Stephanopoulos.
He's a law professor at the University of Chicago.
He loves the Earmuff District
so much he even put it on his wedding cake.
To him, these weird, squiggly lines
represent something positive.
The reason the district is shaped that way
is because it's trying to capture two different pockets
of Latino voters in Chicago,
but it's also trying to respect a black population
in between those Latino pockets
that's part of a different black majority district.
It makes the point that not all funnily-shaped
districts are bad.
Drawing districts to protect the minority vote
is the kind of gerrymandering that was envisioned
in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Supreme Court has regularly upheld gerrymandered maps,
especially when they provide representation for black voters.
It's thrown out maps doing the opposite,
like in North Carolina.
A bizarre district shape is a good clue
that something was going on other
than just a desire to draw pretty districts,
but you don't know what that something is
until you dig a little deeper.
That something can sometimes be nefarious, you know,
partisan gain or protecting all the incumbents,
but other times it can be a totally innocent
purpose like minority representation,
partisan fairness,
or reflecting the communities that people live in.
Many states require districts
to recognize communities of interest.
In other words, people who share a culture or ethnicity
or even economic interests.
So, if gerrymandering can be used for good,
why do people say they hate it?
Simple -- it can easily be abused.
Experts say some Republican legislatures,
like in North Carolina and Virginia,
manipulated this type of re-districting in their favor.
And it's not just about race.
Cue Wisconsin, specifically Gill v Whitford,
one of two partisan gerrymandering cases
the Supreme Court has taken up.
Our friend Nick, the guy who loved gerrymandering so much
he put it on a cake, he's one of the lawyers
trying to throw out the Wisconsin map.
Republicans skewed their maps so much that in 2012,
they won 47% of the vote,
but 62% of the seats in the statehouse.
Wait, what?
Cue the efficiency gap.
It helps show how skewed a map
is in favor of one party over another.
This is how it works.
Imagine a small state of 50 people
with 20 people from Party A
and 30 people from Party B.
Party A wants to skew the map in its favor.
It packs a bunch of Party B's voters
into a few districts while spreading out, or "cracking,"
Party A's voters across others, giving them the edge unfairly.
The wasted votes would include any person stuck in a district
where their vote was designed to not matter.
Funny enough, this type of partisan gerrymandering
is actually bipartisan.
There's a second case at the Supreme Court, Benisek v Lamone,
which is about Democrats doing the same thing in Maryland.
But the efficiency gap only gives us a way
to measure partisanship, and that's about it.
There's no line telling us where the maps go too far,
and conservatives on the bench seem
uncomfortable with drawing that line.
So, how do we decide how partisan is too partisan?
That's what the Supreme Court needs to decide,
and that decision could have widespread impacts
on the upcoming midterm elections and beyond.
So, much better than litigation, I think,
is just not involving the politicians
in the line drawing in the first place.
They have no business drawing the lines for districts
that they're gonna then run in themselves.
You know, it's a classic conflict of interest.
States like California and Washington
already do a bit of what Nick just said.
They let nonpartisan commissions draw their maps.
And Colorado, it lets the leaders of each party
choose appointments who then hash out the maps together.
That's great, but as long as demographics change
and our voting system is based on maps,
the United States will never perfect its election system.
But we can always try to make it better.
That might mean squiggly districts that look like
earmuffs, but that's okay.
In the end, it's not about what the districts look like.
It's about who's in them.