What’s better than apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream? As a Fourth of July treat, it’s a tradition, and everyone gets a good-sized slice. But look at a piece sliced from a pie in an irregular shape: a piece hacked as thin as possible along a pan’s edge, a piece meandering along a plate’s edge, or a piece whittled down to a thread with minimal filling. That’s not fair—and that’s how gerrymandering works when voting districts are drawn in a party’s favor. A slice of apple pie so divided looks wrong—and so does divvying up voting districts in favor of a certain side. Gerrymandering, in that sense, is as American as apple pie.
Gerrymandering is when politicians redraw the boundaries of voting districts in a way that gives their party an electoral advantage. They employ strategies of “packing” voters who support the opposition party to compress their votes into just one district and “cracking” voters across many coalition districts to dilute their influence. These policies, in effect, predetermine election outcomes, taking an apple pie and cutting it to benefit only one political party who may not represent the full will of the people, leaving the majority with mere cinnamon-dusted crumbs.
Gerrymandering has clear and disastrous consequences for the principles of representative democracy upon which this county was founded. In the 2012 House elections, Democrats won the popular vote by one percent, despite Republicans winning a 33-seat advantage in the House of Representatives. The same map would later give the Republicans a 47-seat advantage despite having won the popular vote by only one percent. In 2022, Democrats won three seats in Illinois, and Republicans won five seats in both Texas and Florida, respectively, due to gerrymandering.
Common sense would dictate that in all of the above scenarios, the balance of congressional representation between the two parties would have differed only slightly. Gerrymandering, however, caused a small difference in the popular vote to inflate until it encompassed a large seat turnover. This summer, Texas cut the pie mid-bake. The redrawing of Texas’ congressional districts five years before they were meant to be updated constitutes a circumvention of democracy that represents a one-party system under the disguise of a democracy. Communities that previously were known for competitive elections were shaped into Republican strongholds. Urban centers were packed into a few districts, while communities were split, diluting the influence of racial minorities.
The problem extends beyond Texas. President Trump is advocating for Republican-held states to redraw their district maps this year to prevent major losses during the midterm elections on November 4. In Missouri, Republicans are seeking to dismantle a Democrat district in Kansas City. In the state of Kansas, the GOP legislature aims to prevent the only Democrat representative in the state from winning a seat.
The problem extends beyond Republicans. Democrats won three extra seats in Illinois in the 2022 elections. In Maryland, Democrats won seven out of eight congressional seats despite having won only 63 percent of the popular vote. This year in California, there are threats to redistrict the state ahead of the midterm elections as a response to Texas’ actions.
The consequences of gerrymandering strike at the very soul of our democracy. When voters see that their vote is being orchestrated to lose importance, faith in the system crumbles. When politicians rig the game, elections become not a contest of ideas but an exercise in control. It is a fundamental injustice against the constitution that people may be silenced in favor of unequal, partisan governance.
It is no wonder that the vast majority of Americans across both party lines reject gerrymandering. The American people do not want their voices to be quashed by the calculations of corrupt mapmakers. What is the point of democracy if it is a facade for a one-party-rule system? After all, if there is no competition, representatives won’t feel the need to act for the good of their constituents; rather, they will act only for their self-interest.
Gerrymandering is a betrayal of the principles outlined by the Constitution and an affront to the democratic representation of the people. Democracy is not a game to be rigged—it is a promise to the people. Americans cannot sit idly as they watch their communities get split. America must not wave goodbye to an equally-sliced American pie.
