“The American people do not like gerrymandering. It leaves them feeling powerless and discouraged; that their votes are wasted and voices silenced. They see it rigging our political system to favor special interests,” Sens. John McCain and Sheldon Whitehouse said in a joint statement on Oct. 3. 

The statement then went on to explain why these feelings are valid. 

Gerrymandering is a political strategy that manipulates the shape of electoral districts in order to favor one party. This occurs when people drawing the district lines either keep the opposing party together in one district, or put them in a district that is so heavily populated with the other party that their vote will seem to be buried under the majority. 

(For a visual explanation, check out this article by the Washington Post)

McCain and Whitehouse are against gerrymandering and the ISD Editorial Board agrees. Gerrymandering creates an unfair advantage for the dominant party by misrepresenting the districts. Gerrymandering causes an unbalanced amount of representatives – sending more representatives of the majority party and less (or no) representatives of the minority party to the House to speak for the people of the entire state. 

Last week, the Supreme Court heard the case of Gill v. Whitford, in which Wisconsin’s district lines were determined as unconstitutional for underrepresenting the democratic vote.

The Supreme Court must decide whether gerrymandering is constitutional or not and, as of Monday, they haven’t reached a decision.

We believe that gerrymandering is unconstitutional not because of which party the practice usually supports, but because of the people who are being manipulated, misrepresented and brushed to the side.

Everyone’s vote should have the same weight and make as much of a difference as anyone from either party. Gerrymandering doesn’t allow this because it violates the First and 14th Amendments by making minority party voters “an unequal participant in the decisions of the body politic.”

At the end of their statement, Sens. McCain and Whitehouse said: 

“The Court can clean up a cause of America’s crisis in confidence in our democracy, protect our elections from wildly partisan ‘bulk’ gerrymandering, and return control of our elections to the people. We hope the Court will.”

So do we.