Despite being deeply un-democratic, gerrymandering is technically legal. The Voting Rights Act did ban racial gerrymandering, but the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed partisan gerrymandering to continue. A few states have banned partisan gerrymandering, but it is still legal in most of the country.

Partisan gerrymandering is one of the most common types of gerrymandering, where district lines are drawn strategically around groups of people that reliably vote for one political party. As a result, the party drawing the lines gets more representatives elected than they would with fairly drawn districts.

Racial gerrymandering is when bad actors draw election lines that strategically group members of a certain race together in voting districts to dilute or weaken their voting power. 

The two main ways gerrymandering happens are “cracking” (breaking up similar voting groups into different districts to dilute the power of their vote) and “packing” (crowding similar voting groups into one or two districts to diminish their overall representation and power in government).

Redistricting happens every 10 years following the U.S. Census. It’s the process of redrawing election district maps to reflect changes in population. It has major implications for the number of representatives a state sends to Congress as well as for the balance of power between the parties.

Independent redistricting commissions are used in nine states. RepresentUs has led the way in bringing these commissions to Michigan and Colorado, while improving the process in Virginia, Ohio and Utah. We also helped defeat a partisan gerrymandering amendment in New Jersey.

States with independent redistricting commissions draw fairer maps, according to the Redistricting Report Card we published with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. On average, states that had some form of commission drew “B+” maps, while states where partisans controlled the process, drew “D+” maps.