The Gerrymandering Project
The fold out magazine spread is a summary of FiveThirtyEight’s six-part podcast series on understanding the effects of gerrymandering and what’s being done to try to reform it. Galen Druke is the podcast producer and host. He traveled across the United States to interview people who were passionate about the issue. The podcast highlighted four states in order to address various types of gerrymandering and analyze the effective are various reforms to the redistricting process.
Gerrymandering is defined as drawing voting districts to give one party numeric advantage over another. Redrawing district lines are necessary to reflect change in population and demographics collected by the United States Census. However, incumbent legislators use this system to maintain majority power in Congress. The main issue with gerrymandering is proving if a state has been unfairly drawn for political gain. The perception of what is fair varies by what political party or community interest an individual support. The concept of perception was included in the imagery influenced by the Rorschach test’s use of ink blots. District like the twelfth district of North Carolina are viewed as controversial merely by its odd shape. Yet the physical shape of a district does not equate to an inability to have competitive elections.