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Gerrymandering facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Gerrymandering is when a political group tries to change a voting district to create a result that helps them or hurts the group who is against them. It is named after Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814). Gerrymandering works by wasting votes. It puts more votes of winners into the district they will win so the losers win in another district.

Example

If we have Group A and Group B both trying to win in a district. Group A has 40 votes and Group B has 50. In another district Group A knows Group B will win for sure. Group A changes the voting district so that 11 votes are moved to the other district. Now they will win 40 votes to 39.

Images for kids

  • The Gerry-Mander Edit

    Printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was made in reaction to the newly drawn state senate election district of South Essex created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the Democratic-Republican Party. The caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of the district as a dragon-like "monster", and Federalist newspaper editors and others at the time likened it to a salamander.

  • Elkanah Tisdale, The Gerry-Mander Map, 1813 Cornell CUL PJM 1034 01

    The image from above appearing in a news article by Elkanah Tisdale in 1813

  • Map22007

    Electoral divisions in the Sydney area, drawn by the politically independent Australian Electoral Commission

  • Polygons of Georgia Districts 8 and 10

    Smallest possible convex polygons drawn around the 8th (left) and 10th congressional districts in Georgia, 2012. To avoid penalizing large areas, the measure is the ratio of the area of the district to the area of the polygon. District 8 will get a lower score than District 10.

  • TravisCountyDistricts

    U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red), in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts.

  • North Carolina 12th Congressional District (National Atlas)

    Shaw v. Reno was a United States Supreme Court case involving the redistricting and racial gerrymandering of North Carolina's 12th congressional district (pictured).

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Gerrymandering para niños

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