Who controls redistricting & gerrymandering? You can.
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How fairly drawn is your congressional district?
See the shape of your congressional district with this free map.
Why does the shape of a district matter? Congressional districts are supposed to represent the people who live there so voters can elect who represents them. Politicians have corrupted the process by drawing district boundaries where they get to choose who can vote. They do this by drawing districts which only include their supporters. This leads to more partisanship because politicians like Jim Jordan know that they only have to keep their supporters happy to get re-elected. There are no political consequences for him to represent all the voters in his district who may not agree with his actions.
How did redistricting become a scheme to grab power?
“Thomas Hofeller was a Republican Party operative, known as the master of the modern gerrymander. Perhaps one of the clearest and ugliest gerrymanders in North Carolina — or in the entire nation — is the congressional-district line that cuts in half the nation’s largest historically black college, North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro. The district line divided this majority minority campus — and the city — so precisely that it all but guarantees it will be represented in Congress by two Republicans for years to come. North Carolina Republicans have long denied that this line, between the state’s Sixth and Thirteenth Congressional Districts, was intentionally drawn to dilute black voting power, which would be a violation of the constitutional prohibition against racial gerrymandering.
Hofeller also appears to have intensively researched the impact of the state’s voter-I.D. laws. In 2013, Republicans passed one of the strictest voter-I.D. laws in the country, which rejected forms of identification typically used by students, government employees, and racial minorities. It also cut the number of early-voting days by a week and put an end to same-day voter registration during that period. Hofeller created spreadsheets listing the voters, college students, and racial minorities who lacked driver’s licenses. He appears to have gathered much of this…
