How some politicians are fighting back against gerrymandering

In North Carolina, Democratic state Senate candidate Kate Barr is knocking on doors and meeting voters in a district just outside of Charlotte — but she’s not running to win.

In fact, she admits that she can’t win. 

“We live in a gerrymandered district,” said Barr. “I actually live in a gerrymandered state.”

Gerrymandering, a portmanteau made from combining former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry’s name with salamander — because the district drawn up in his favor looked like the amphibian — is the term for when states draw electoral boundaries to favor one party.

“North Carolina’s voting maps have been drawn so that, at least in this case, the Republican Party will keep their power almost no matter what, and I’m running to call them out, even though I can’t win,” Barr said.

“I think I’m supposed to lose by 27%,” she said. “It’s like the Mount Everest plus of political gerrymandering.”

Despite the fact that there are roughly an even number of registered Republicans and registered Democrats in North Carolina, the state legislature has a Republican supermajority. That same legislature drew district lines making it almost impossible for Barr to win her state Senate race.

In Springfield, Illinois, the Democratic-dominated legislature did the same thing, drawing Republican Rodney Davis out of a decade in Congress.

Davis, who grew up in Taylorville, Illinois, and rose through local politics before being elected to Congress, said his district was “changed drastically.”

After the 2020 census, Illinois Democrats in charge of drawing new maps turned Davis’ competitive 13th district into a Democratic stronghold, putting Taylorville in a neighboring district that was much more conservative.  

In addition to shaping Congress, heavyhanded gerrymandering can also breed political extremism, as party loyalty becomes more important and bipartisanship suffers.

Professor Sam Wang, who heads the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, gives North Carolina and Illinois failing grades for the fairness of their maps.

“If one party gets control of the process or one faction gets control of the process, then they can have free reign,” Wang said.

“The danger of politicians picking their voters is that there is an overwhelming temptation to self-deal and have a situation where they never have to face competition, Wang added.

But there are alternatives to partisan power grabs. California, Missouri, Arizona and Colorado use citizen commissions, not politicians, to draw district lines. In Ohio, where Republicans have drawn district lines to strongly favor their party, voters will decide this November whether to create their own citizen commission.

But the futility of the current situation fuels Barr and those holding the line to support her cause.

“Every vote I get is two middle fingers to Raleigh about what we expect to see in our voting maps,” she said.

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