A monster lurks among us.

First spotted over 200 years ago, it  can be recognized for its strange forms,   dubious motivations, and…suspicious  consolidation of voting power. This is the gerrymander, and it’s still out there, slashing voting districts, sneaking unfair partisan advantages into elections, and weakening democratic representation.

The question is: where did it come from? And can it be stopped? Hi!

I'm Kousha Navidar, this is Crash Course, and we’re answering Big Questions on U. S. Government. [THEME MUSIC] Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry drew this monstrosity of an electoral district (wings not included) in 1812, as a ploy to give his own political party an edge in elections.

And he just, I don’t know, hoped nobody would notice? C’mon, dude. It looks like a salamander or something.

Which is exactly what everyone else at the time thought, and how it got lampooned in a Boston Gazette cartoon with a name that’s stuck ever since: the “gerrymander.” Imagine getting dunked on so hard, high school students have to learn it as a vocabulary term 200 years later. Gerrymandering is drawing congressional district lines to give one group or party an unfair advantage in elections, often leaving bizarre shapes on state maps. And while it isn’t new, it’s only gotten more intense in today’s hotly divided political climate.

To understand gerrymandering, we have to start by understanding what a congressional district even is, and how their borders get decided in the first place. Basically, congressional districts are these clearly defined geographical regions within a state. Each district is represented by a member of the federal House of Representatives.

Every state is promised at least one congressional district, and the rest are determined by population. Since 1929, there have been 435 permanent seats in the House. And as each state’s population changes, so does their share of those 435 total seats.

That process is called reapportionment— the post-Census reallocation of House seats to each state. And based on those population changes, and resulting representative shifts, states have to be redistricted, where district lines are changed to account for lost or gained House seats, either by drawing more districts or lumping old ones together. Ooo fun!

Art project! Even if a state doesn’t lose or gain seats, the districts themselves have often either lost or gained residents. That’s a reason to redraw district lines, too, thanks to the 1962 Supreme Court decision in Baker v.

Carr. This helped establish the “one person, one vote” principle when it comes to congressional districts and representation in the House, which means all of a state’s districts need to be about equal in population. Otherwise, a vote in a less populous district carries more influence than a vote in a heavily populated one.

Don’t think too hard about how that principle applies to presidential elections… or the Senate… Exactly how these new district lines are drawn is up to individual states– sometimes it’s decided by state legislators themselves, or sometimes by specific commissions. But it all sounds simple enough to do… [muffled voice offscreen] Oh, I’m being told no, it’s definitely not. Thankfully, we’ve got our brilliant Congressperson John J.

Johnson to straighten us out. [Congressperson] Oh, Kousha, stop! You’re the brilliant one! [Kousha] No, you! [Congressperson] No, you! [Kousha] No, you– [Congressperson] Listen, I really haven’t got time for circular flattery today. [Kousha] –oh, sorry. [Congressperson] Now, when it comes to understanding how all of this goes down, it’s helpful to look at an example of district lines drawn as they should be, by people with good intentions. Welcome to the beautiful state of Koushachusetts!

When it comes to congressional mapmaking, first, we have to consider geographic compactness. Ideally, we want tiny, boring-shaped districts with smooth boundaries. Think circles.

Squares. No salamanders, centipedes, or flying robot tigers. But we aren’t just making squares for the sake of making squares; by keeping our shapes as boring and basic as possible, it helps us be as neutral as possible with our groupings.

But as much as we like being boring, random, and nonpartisan, there are plenty of other things to consider when it comes to Congressional mapmaking– like population density. Plus, some states require mapmakers to consider preserving communities of interest. These are the neighborhoods, ethnic communities, and industries where people have common interests.

This allows communities to actually vote for what’s best for them. At the same time, we also try to respect political and geographic boundaries already in place. Where are the county lines, city lines, and cores of the previous districts?

What about natural features like rivers and mountain ranges? But then there’s partisanship— and this gets tricky. We do want to take political leanings into account, to an extent, because we want to keep lively competition between parties in each district.

That means ensuring a roughly even balance of Anti-Arugula Party supporters and Make Arugula Great Again party supporters. But there’s also the argument that partisan balance within an individual district doesn’t matter so much, as long as there's a balance of power between all the districts. It is a lot to consider, and whatever choice we make about where to draw the lines, it is going to reflect what we choose to prioritize as the line-drawers.

All of which makes this mapmaking thing not so easy to do. Excuse me, I’ve gotta take this. Go for Johnson. [KOUSHA] Wow.

Ok first, Koushachusetts? Great place to live. I hear every day is Taco Tuesday.

But second, and more to the point of what we’re all doing here today, with so many conflicting priorities, it seems legitimately very difficult to draw district maps that make everybody happy, even with the best intentions. And when intentions aren’t so pure, well, that’s when you get this guy. Gerrymandering happens when the folks drawing the district lines purposefully go against guidelines to dilute certain communities’ voting power, and enhance others.

Gerrymandering happens in two main ways. The first is cracking, splitting a certain voting population across many districts, so their vote stays weaker in all of them. The second is packing— lumping a certain voting population into just a few districts, so their vote essentially gets “wasted” when you look at the larger state or nation.

And so far, I’ve been speaking of gerrymandering as if it’s just one beast. But there’s actually two primary kinds, treated very differently under the law. In racial gerrymandering, race is the main factor behind how a district gets drawn.

Historically, and into the present day, it’s been used to dilute the voting power of racial minorities, especially Black citizens in the South. Following the abolition of slavery in the US, racial gerrymandering took a huge toll on voters of color in the South. Because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which outlawed racial discrimination in voting, and therefore racial gerrymandering), it’s gotten harder to get away with.

But not for lack of trying. In 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of the VRA to purposefully protect racial communities of interest was actually unconstitutional– making it pretty much impossible to challenge racial gerrymandering in the future. But while racial gerrymandering is still technically illegal, partisan gerrymandering is more of a gray area.

That’s where mapmakers use packing or cracking to give one political party an edge over another. And this is something both sides do. When partisan gerrymandering is going on, you’ll often see lopsided election results that don’t line up with the popular vote.

Take North Carolina: in 2024, Republicans won 10 out of 14 House seats— but only got about 55% of the actual votes across the state. Or Illinois: that same year, Democrats held 14 out of 17 House seats, but only got about 60% of the vote. And don’t forget: it’s often state legislators themselves who draw district lines.

So with the governor’s sign-off, it can be really easy for the party in power to help themselves stay in power through partisan gerrymandering. The system is broken. Do you get the visual metaphor?

So, gerrymandering definitely isn’t getting better. But is it actually getting worse? " And could it be to blame for our more and more polarized political vibe we’ve got going on? There’s definitely an argument that gerrymandering is driving polarization, splitting Democrats and Republicans further apart by helping parties secure certain seats as “safe.” The thinking goes that once a party’s a shoe-in for a specific seat, the representative filling it will have more incentive to listen to their own party who voted for them — and way less reason to listen to the toothless opposition who didn’t.

But there’s also decent evidence that gerrymandering is actually more of a symptom of how polarized we’re getting, not the driving cause. It’s the tummy ache itself, not the entire sleeve of Oreos I ate last night that caused it, you know? First, it’s not only those super gerrymandered districts electing representatives that are more extreme than the norm.

Plus, jurisdictions whose lines don’t change, like counties, are also leaning more heavily toward one party or another these days. So, polarization has found its way into our politics in other ways than just partisan redistricting. But even if the gerrymander is more a symptom of polarization than the cause, as partisanism escalates, so too does the gerrymander.

It’s big, bad, antidemocratic news. Not only does it suppress voters’ voices, but it makes us trust Congress— and our system of government in general— a whole lot less. Now, if you’re thinking, “this whole gerrymandering thing sounds incompatible with democratic principles,” you’ve got something in common with the 2019 Supreme Court case Rucho v.

Common Cause, which agreed that partisan gerrymandering is, and I quote “incompatible with democratic principles.” But the Court also ruled it’s not their place to stop it. They gave the logic that federal courts can only stop gerrymandering based on innate individual traits we can’t choose, like race, not ones we can, like your political affiliation. But there are other options on the table to put a stop to partisan gerrymandering.

Rucho v. Common Cause made it clear that Congress and the states can pass laws that limit gerrymandering. A lot of them just…haven’t.

But some states have moved to do other things to keep gerrymandering in check, like changing who’s in charge of drawing the lines in the first place. Some states appoint advisory commissions to advise the politicians who conduct district mapmaking, while others put the task toward a mix of elected officials and independent citizens. And still others use independent redistricting commissions whose members can’t be elected officials.

And while commissions aren’t perfect, they do lower the odds of partisanship making a map really unfair. Another possibility is just doing away with districts altogether and adopting proportional representation— where representatives would be allocated to each party based on a popular vote. So, if a party gets half the votes, they get half the seats, bing bang boom.

It would need an entire constitutional amendment to happen nationally, which seems pretty unlikely, but supporters argue it’s one way we could finally get rid of a pesky problem that’s been dogging our republic for over 200 years. The gerrymander is a beast brought into our country not by the Constitution, like the Electoral College, but by our parties’ desires to dilute the voices of those who disagree. And the more we feed it with our own hyper-partisanship, the more it will gnaw away at our democracy.

There’s no easy way to draw a Congressional map, but one thing is for certain: we’re dealing with a system where, for the most part, politicians themselves are the ones wielding the pen, and the power. And while getting rid of gerrymandering won’t be easy, it will be worth it. Because democracy needs disagreement, different voices, and healthy competition in order to achieve actual representation of the people.

Speaking of representation – next time, we’ll ask: if Congress is supposed to represent “the people,” then why are so many Congressmembers old, rich, and white? I’ll see you then. This episode of Crash Course Big Questions on U.

S. Government was produced in partnership with USAFacts, a non-partisan civic tech project that makes government data easier to understand. For more resources that go along with these videos, go to usafacts.org/crashcourse Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Big Questions on U.

S. Government, which was filmed in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.