Thread by @mcpli

A1: Short answer - Gerrymandering is manipulation of legislative & congressional district boundaries for political gain. But 1/ #fairmaps

It’s more complicated than that because gerrymandering, like cancer, is a broad term. 2/ #fairmaps

Just as you have different kinds of cancer (liver, brain, skin, etc) so you have different kinds of gerrymanders. 3/ #fairmaps

And like the different kinds of cancer, different gerrymanders have different causes, symptoms, & cures. 4/ #fairmaps

With gerrymanders, e.g., you have racial gerrymanders – drawing districts ‘predominately on the basis of race.’ 5/ #fairmaps

Then you have various kinds of political gerrymanders. /6 #fairmaps

For example, drawing a district to protect an incumbent is one form of a political gerrymander. 7/ #fairmaps

Conversely, targeting an incumbent (or candidate) also can be called gerrymandering. 8/ #fairmaps

Ditto drawing a district so your brother-in-law (or other favored candidate) can win election to Congress. 9/ #fairmaps

BUT those are district specific forms of gerrymandering. That’s not what’s at issue with Whitford. 10/ #fairmaps

Rather, the type of extreme gerrymandering at issue in Wisconsin in Whitford is much, much more pernicious. 11/ #fairmaps

That’s because it involves a party systematically entrenching & locking in a majority for itself. 12/ #fairmaps

You see this type of gerrymandering in North Carolina where GOP has a 10-3 congressional advantage in a 50/50 state 13/ #fairmaps.

Ditto another 50/50 state- Pennsylvania – where GOP has durable 13-5 advantage in congressional seats. 14/ #fairmaps

This type of gerrymandering is more pernicious (a) because it occurs at a statewide level and . . . 15/ #fairmaps

And undermines the representativeness that supposed to be at the heart of American democracy. 16/ #fairmaps

John Adams famously said legislatures should be an “exact portrait,” “miniature” of the people. 17/ #fairmaps

That representativeness is lost with maps like those in NC or PA – or Wisconsin. 18/ #fairmaps

One final note: it’s important to distinguish between gerrymandering symptoms & disease itself. 19/ #fairmaps

This is an easy mistake in thinking about gerrymandering. 20/ #fairmaps

Lots of symptoms (lack of compactness, competition, ugly shapes, etc.) often get mistaken for the disease of gerrymandering. 21/ #fairmaps

The reality is that they are symptoms that something may be amiss. But only symptoms, not the disease itself. 22/ #fairmaps

A district may be ugly or non-compact because it keeps a community together. Or follows city lines. 23/ #fairmaps

Nice looking districts, conversely, may be highly unrepresentative. 24/ #fairmaps

In other words, be wary of nice looking maps like in NC that nonetheless produce a 10-3 GOP skew. 25/ #fairmaps