This Skillbuilder will help you better understand the concept of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering occurs when a party attempts to draw electoral district boundaries in a way that will enable it to win as many seats as possible. But if everyone's vote counts the same, how is it possible for district boundaries to affect election outcomes? Maybe an example will help.

Let's say you're a member of the Green Party and you're in charge of redrawing three districts in Squaresville (population = 45; see scenic map below). Unfortunately for you, your party is running a distant second in Squaresville to the Red Party, whose members make up fully 64 percent of the voters in town (look at them and their smug little smiles). Unfortunately for the Red folks, your party controls the state legislature and governorship, and you want to set the boundary lines to maximize your party's representation. To make things simple, let's assume that each new district has to be either a row or a column consisting of three city blocks. So the main question for you is whether it would be better for the Green Party to have the voters divided up in columns or in rows. So how do the parties do in each case?

Columns--Don't Do This at Home Well, if you divide the districts up into three vertical columns, the Red Party cleans up, winning the left column by a vote of 10-5, the middle column 9-6, and the right column 10-5 again. So don't do columns ... that'd be bad. Row, Row, Row Your Vote So what happens if you do three rows instead? Well, that's more like it. You win the top row by a vote of 7-8, lose the middle row by a vote of 15-0 (ouch!), but win the last row, again by a vote of 7-8. So just to reiterate, despite being outnumbered almost two to one by the Reds in the electorate, you've now cleverly turned the tables and managed to gain a two-to-one advantage of your own in representation for the Green Party. So how could this happen?

Analysis
The problem for the Red Party in the row districts is that they're not voting very efficiently ... they barely lose to your Green guys in the top and bottom rows but totally destroy you in the middle row. If they were just distributed a little more evenly (as in the columns), they could beat you without breaking a sweat. So the main trick in redistricting is to get the opposing party to "waste" their votes, while simultaneously getting as far as possible on your few votes. Pretty clear?

Comprehension Questions