By Blake Kim
Every 10 years, states get the opportunity to redraw the boundaries of governmental districts to elect Congressional representatives to represent their communities fairly; however, some states have taken advantage of this opportunity and used it as a way to distribute their population in favor of a certain party. There are two distinct types of gerrymandering: cracking and packing. Cracking splits up voters that a state wants to disregard, putting a large group of these voters into different districts and therefore splitting up their votes. Packing, on the other hand, consolidates a large group of these disfavored groups into as few districts as possible, ensuring the majority of their districts vote in a certain direction. The idea of gerrymandering is completely undemocratic, allowing the powerful to choose voters rather than the voters choosing their politicians. It completely disregards the voice of a group of people to win an election. Recently, America’s two most populous states, Texas and California, have initiated a fight to reshape the boundaries of congressional districts to rig the election of certain candidates, defined above as gerrymandering. Texas has put in efforts to redraw its maps in favor of Republicans. To neutralize Republican gains, California has threatened to do the same for Democrats. While they might balance each other out, this idea of continued competitive gerrymandering might provoke other states to do the same; the more this reshaping continues, the less Americans have the opportunity to voice their own opinions, unable to vote on the government they pay taxes for. Thankfully, the Fair-Representation Act, reintroduced last month, makes every district competitive by using multi-member districts and ranked choice voting. Voters like you or your family members can ask your representative to support the act here.