Let’s say there are three classes, and we’re going to have them vote on lunch. Overall there are 75 kids (25 in each class), and 30 want pizza while 45 want burgers.
If you split the classes evenly with 10 pizza and 15 burger kids per class, it will be 3-0 in favour of burgers. If you split the classes so two classes have 15 pizza kids and the third has no pizza kids, it will be 2-1 in favour of pizza.
The same amount of people would vote, but not the same number of votes for each candidate in each district. The easiest way to demonstrate is with an example.
There are nine people, 6 yellow party and 3 purple party. One way to break those into districts is one district for the 3purple, and two for the yellows. The representatives would then be 2-1 yellow-purple. But you could also make three districts each with 2 yellow and 1 purple voter. Then each district would have a yellow majority and elect a yellow representative. The final representative count would be 3-0 yellow-purple.
The same population gets different results based on districting. With extreme example you could even have the minority party get the majority of votes.
Gerrymandering works along the lines of “packing and cracking”. They pack districts full of voters for one party and crack the rest among other districts.
This doesn’t work for statewide races, though, as they only count total votes for senators.
Election isn’t simply about counting the votes of the Individual people voting. The people decides
Who win the district, but the districts decides who win the stat
Gerrymandering is a way to draw districts so that a certain group in each district has an advantage over the other despite the entire population as a whole doesn’t align.
That’s probably the best explanation I’ve found. The visuals really help.
Although redlining is kind of a different thing from gerrymandering. Redlining dealt with racial “lines” in housing communities and not necessarily voting.
Let’s say you have 10 districts and 100 people, 50 vote party A and 50 vote Party B and you want the districts with equal noumber of voters in them so 10 people per a district. District 1-8 we’ll put 6 A voters and 4 B voters. That’s 48 A voters and 32 B voters but Party A won all 8 pf tjpse districts. District 9 and 10 get 1 A voter and 9 B voters. Party B won 2 districts.
So even though 50% of the voters voted for A, they got 80% of the districts. Party B has 50% of the voters and only got 20% of the districts.
The goal of gerrymandering is to arrange the districts so that your party has the advantage in more districts than your opponents. This is done by packing your opponent’s voters into as few districts as possible, giving them easy wins in those few, while your party gets the advantage in all the others.
Look at it this way – lets say you have a state with 100 voters, divided into 5 districts. Those voters are evenly split. 50 D and 50 R. Each district therefore has to have 20 voters.
You could split the districts evenly, so each one has 10 D and 10 R voters. That would make every election very close.
Or, you could split them up so your party has more voters than the other in more districts.
District 1: 20 D and 0 R
Districts 2 through 5: 7-8 D and 12-13 R
This gives the R party an advantage in 4 out of 5 districts, meaning they will almost always have more representatives elected.
well its simple. if 6 people are voting in 2 districts, and 4 of them are voting the same way, you can put 3 of them in the same district and elect a canidate from their party and now the other is a 1:2 majority for the other party.
or you can split it into 2 districts 2:1 and elect 2 cabidates from the first party and none from the 2nd.
Gerrymandering and redlining refer to two slightly different things, but it sounds like you’re asking about gerrymandering so I’ll address that.
The easiest way to see the problem is with an example. Imagine that I have 100 voters and I need to divide them into four different districts of equal population. Imagine also that 50% are Republicans and 50% are Democrats. Finally, imagine that I’m a Republican and I want Republicans to win.
I could put 25 Democrats in one district, and divide the remaining 25 Democrats between the other three districts (8, 8, and 9). That means that in the remaining three districts, there are 16 or 17 Republicans each. so if we tally votes one district at a time, the outcome is that three districts are majority Republican and one district is majority Democrat. Republicans always win.
That’s the problem. It should be 50-50 and it’s actually 75-25 because of gerrymandering.
Comments
Let’s say there are three classes, and we’re going to have them vote on lunch. Overall there are 75 kids (25 in each class), and 30 want pizza while 45 want burgers.
If you split the classes evenly with 10 pizza and 15 burger kids per class, it will be 3-0 in favour of burgers. If you split the classes so two classes have 15 pizza kids and the third has no pizza kids, it will be 2-1 in favour of pizza.
The same amount of people would vote, but not the same number of votes for each candidate in each district. The easiest way to demonstrate is with an example.
There are nine people, 6 yellow party and 3 purple party. One way to break those into districts is one district for the 3purple, and two for the yellows. The representatives would then be 2-1 yellow-purple. But you could also make three districts each with 2 yellow and 1 purple voter. Then each district would have a yellow majority and elect a yellow representative. The final representative count would be 3-0 yellow-purple.
The same population gets different results based on districting. With extreme example you could even have the minority party get the majority of votes.
Gerrymandering works along the lines of “packing and cracking”. They pack districts full of voters for one party and crack the rest among other districts.
This doesn’t work for statewide races, though, as they only count total votes for senators.
This explains it pretty well with a visual
https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/rethinking-redistricting
Election isn’t simply about counting the votes of the Individual people voting. The people decides
Who win the district, but the districts decides who win the stat
Gerrymandering is a way to draw districts so that a certain group in each district has an advantage over the other despite the entire population as a whole doesn’t align.
https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY?si=Gk98EPdbs2HyVi5L
That’s probably the best explanation I’ve found. The visuals really help.
Although redlining is kind of a different thing from gerrymandering. Redlining dealt with racial “lines” in housing communities and not necessarily voting.
Let’s say you have 10 districts and 100 people, 50 vote party A and 50 vote Party B and you want the districts with equal noumber of voters in them so 10 people per a district. District 1-8 we’ll put 6 A voters and 4 B voters. That’s 48 A voters and 32 B voters but Party A won all 8 pf tjpse districts. District 9 and 10 get 1 A voter and 9 B voters. Party B won 2 districts.
So even though 50% of the voters voted for A, they got 80% of the districts. Party B has 50% of the voters and only got 20% of the districts.
The goal of gerrymandering is to arrange the districts so that your party has the advantage in more districts than your opponents. This is done by packing your opponent’s voters into as few districts as possible, giving them easy wins in those few, while your party gets the advantage in all the others.
Look at it this way – lets say you have a state with 100 voters, divided into 5 districts. Those voters are evenly split. 50 D and 50 R. Each district therefore has to have 20 voters.
You could split the districts evenly, so each one has 10 D and 10 R voters. That would make every election very close.
Or, you could split them up so your party has more voters than the other in more districts.
District 1: 20 D and 0 R
Districts 2 through 5: 7-8 D and 12-13 R
This gives the R party an advantage in 4 out of 5 districts, meaning they will almost always have more representatives elected.
well its simple. if 6 people are voting in 2 districts, and 4 of them are voting the same way, you can put 3 of them in the same district and elect a canidate from their party and now the other is a 1:2 majority for the other party.
or you can split it into 2 districts 2:1 and elect 2 cabidates from the first party and none from the 2nd.
very good videos if you just search youtube https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY
Gerrymandering and redlining refer to two slightly different things, but it sounds like you’re asking about gerrymandering so I’ll address that.
The easiest way to see the problem is with an example. Imagine that I have 100 voters and I need to divide them into four different districts of equal population. Imagine also that 50% are Republicans and 50% are Democrats. Finally, imagine that I’m a Republican and I want Republicans to win.
I could put 25 Democrats in one district, and divide the remaining 25 Democrats between the other three districts (8, 8, and 9). That means that in the remaining three districts, there are 16 or 17 Republicans each. so if we tally votes one district at a time, the outcome is that three districts are majority Republican and one district is majority Democrat. Republicans always win.
That’s the problem. It should be 50-50 and it’s actually 75-25 because of gerrymandering.