Fighting for Fair Districts

Partisan gerrymandering is when district lines are drawn to discriminate against a political party. It blocks opposition parties from gaining enough voters to represent a viable alternative point of view and creates political monopolies. Gerrymandering is a major reason why politics today feel so polarized. When districts aren’t competitive between multiple viewpoints, representatives don’t need to compromise or appeal beyond their base to win. This fuels partisanship that affects everything from funding to schools to everyday community needs. Real change and progress depend on a healthy push-and-pull — something gerrymandered districts strip away. 

Racial gerrymandering is the intentional sorting of voters into districts based on race. States have traditionally used “cracking” to weaken the political power of communities of color: breaking them up across multiple districts so they cannot elect their candidate of choice. As the voting power of communities of color has grown, states have also used “packing:” concentrating those voters into just a few districts, thereby weakening their political power across other districts. Both tactics weaken the ability of communities of color to elect representatives who reflect their concerns. The result is inadequate representation of their issues in local, state, and federal government. 

Prison gerrymandering counts incarcerated people where they are imprisoned instead of in their home communities. This shifts political power from densely populated urban areas to more rural prison towns, fueling the under-representation of disproportionately incarcerated Black and Latinx communities. Prison gerrymandering can affect redistricting at every level — from states and cities to school boards and local governments — but is most harmful locally, where smaller populations make each person’s representation matter more. By distorting maps and transferring political power away from home communities, prison gerrymandering blocks fair representation and weakens democracy. 

Malapportionment occurs when electoral districts are created with significantly different population sizes. This violates the principle of “one person, one vote,” which in practice means that voters in districts with smaller populations have more influence than those in larger populations because both groups elect the same number of representatives. This uneven distribution of voting power leads to unequal resources and weakens democracy.