The Visceral History of Gerrymandering: How Democracy Gets Fucked Up Like a Junkie at a Friday Night Rave

You know what keeps me up at night: How the hell do we let politicians choose their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians, and why does this democratic cancer keep metastasizing decade after decade?

The stench of democratic decay isn’t subtle—it hits you like the acrid smell of burnt rubber mixed with rotting fish when you look at Texas’s 35th Congressional District. This serpentine monstrosity stretches its twisted tentacles from San Antonio to Austin, weaving along Interstate 35 like some political parasite that’s learned to feed off the corpse of representative democracy. When you trace your finger along this district’s borders on the map, you’re not following natural geographic boundaries or communities of interest. You’re tracing the handiwork of political surgeons who carved up voting power with the precision of a serial killer and the ethics of a loan shark.

This isn’t just about wonky lines on a map that make your geography teacher weep. This is about the systematic evisceration of the most fundamental principle of democratic governance: that your vote should matter. When you step into that voting booth, the sweat beading on your forehead as you contemplate your choices, you should know that your voice carries the same weight as your neighbor’s. Instead, gerrymandering has turned democracy into a rigged casino where the house always wins, and the house is whichever political party gets to redraw the districts after each census.

The Birth of a Political Monster

The word “gerrymander” itself was born from a marriage between political cynicism and artistic mockery. In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed legislation that carved up the state’s electoral districts to favor his Democratic-Republican Party, creating one district so grotesquely shaped that critics said it looked like a salamander. The Boston Gazette combined “Gerry” with “salamander” to create “gerrymander,” a term that has since become synonymous with the manipulation of democratic processes.

But here’s the thing that’ll make your blood boil: what happened in Massachusetts wasn’t even the first time politicians tried this shit. For decades, scholars thought Patrick Henry tried to gerrymander James Madison out of Virginia’s 5th congressional district in 1788, but it turns out that story was based on lies Madison and his allies cooked up. The truth is even more depressing—gerrymandering is so ingrained in American politics that we’ve been making up stories about how old it is just to justify its existence.

The psychological appeal of gerrymandering is as seductive as it is destructive. Imagine you’re a politician who’s tasted power, felt the intoxicating rush of being able to shape policy and command attention. Now imagine someone offers you a way to virtually guarantee that you’ll keep that power for the next decade. All you have to do is draw some lines on a map. The temptation is overwhelming, like offering a gambling addict free chips in Vegas.

The Art of Electoral Surgery: Packing and Cracking

Modern gerrymandering operates through two primary techniques that work like a one-two punch to the gut of fair representation: “packing” and “cracking.” Packing crams as many opposition voters as possible into a few districts, giving them overwhelming wins in those areas while weakening their influence everywhere else. Cracking does the opposite—it slices opposition communities into multiple districts, ensuring they remain a minority in each one.

Picture this: You’re holding a knife over a perfectly good pie, but instead of cutting it into equal slices, you’re carving it up to give your friends the biggest pieces while leaving scraps for everyone else. That’s essentially what packing and cracking do to electoral districts, except the “pie” is democratic representation and the “friends” are partisan politicians who’ve forgotten they’re supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.

The Texas 35th District is a textbook example of packing in action. This district stretches from San Antonio to Austin, following Interstate 35 and in some places barely wider than the highway itself. It was designed to pack Democratic voters—particularly Black and Hispanic communities—into a single district. The result? Democrats get one safe seat while Republicans secure their control over the surrounding districts. It’s like forcing all the opposition fans into one section of the stadium while you spread your supporters throughout the rest of the venue.

In 2017, federal judges ruled that the 35th district was illegally drawn with discriminatory intent, but the damage was already done. By the time courts intervene, these gerrymandered districts have often been in place for years, warping election outcomes and entrenching political power in ways that can take decades to undo.

The Republican Mastery of Electoral Engineering

Let’s cut through the political correctness and acknowledge the elephant in the room: Republicans have turned gerrymandering into an art form. In 2010, they launched a systematic campaign called REDMAP to win control of state legislatures specifically to control redistricting. The strategy was wildly successful, giving them control over drawing 213 congressional districts.

This wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment decision made by a few rogue politicians. This was a coordinated, nationwide strategy that treated democratic representation like a hostile takeover. Republican operatives studied voting patterns, demographic data, and geographic boundaries with the intensity of military strategists planning an invasion. And in many ways, that’s exactly what it was—an invasion of democratic norms by people who decided that winning was more important than playing fair.

The 2010 redistricting cycle produced some of the most extreme gerrymanders in American history. In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans created a congressional map that gave them a virtual lock on 13 of the state’s 18 congressional districts, even in elections where Democrats won the majority of the statewide vote. Think about that for a moment. Democrats could win more votes across the entire state, but Republicans would still control most of the congressional delegation. That’s not democracy—that’s electoral alchemy, turning popular will into minority rule through the dark magic of map manipulation.

The psychological impact of this systematic approach to gerrymandering cannot be overstated. When one party commits so thoroughly to manipulating the electoral process, it creates a arms race mentality. Democrats, faced with Republican gerrymandering, often feel compelled to respond in kind when they have the opportunity. The result is a vicious cycle where both parties prioritize partisan advantage over fair representation, and voters become increasingly cynical about the entire democratic process.

The Technology-Fueled Evolution of Democratic Destruction

If gerrymandering in the 19th century was performed with a butter knife, modern gerrymandering is conducted with surgical precision using laser-guided technology. Computer algorithms and sophisticated data analysis have revolutionized the gerrymandering process, allowing mapmakers to process countless potential configurations to achieve maximum political advantage. These systems can analyze voter preferences down to the individual household level, creating districts that are engineered for specific electoral outcomes with mathematical precision.

The sensory experience of watching this process in action is deeply unsettling. Picture rooms full of political operatives hunched over computer screens, the blue glow illuminating their faces as they manipulate district boundaries with the casual efficiency of video game players. The clicking of keyboards and muted conversations about “efficiency gaps” and “partisan symmetry” create a sterile atmosphere that completely divorces the technical process from its human impact. These aren’t just lines on a screen—they represent communities being split apart, voices being silenced, and democratic representation being systematically undermined.

The irony is palpable. We live in an age where technology could make redistricting more fair and transparent than ever before. Computer algorithms could easily create compact, communities-of-interest-respecting districts that maximize competitive elections and minority representation. Instead, that same technology has been weaponized to create the most sophisticated gerrymanders in history, districts so precisely engineered to produce predetermined outcomes that they make the crude partisan maps of the past look like amateur hour.

The Philosophical Rot at Democracy’s Core

Here’s where things get philosophically nauseating. Gerrymandering represents the complete inversion of democratic theory. Instead of elected officials being accountable to voters, gerrymandering makes voters accountable to the electoral districts that politicians create. It’s like being told you can choose your own meal, but someone else has already decided what restaurant you’ll eat at, what section of the restaurant you’ll sit in, and what’s on the menu.

Political scientist Wayne Dawkins captures this perversion perfectly when he describes gerrymandering as “politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.” This isn’t just a clever turn of phrase—it’s a fundamental description of how gerrymandering corrupts the basic relationship between citizen and representative in a democratic society.

The philosophical implications extend far beyond electoral mechanics. When politicians can essentially choose their constituents, they become less responsive to public opinion and more entrenched in partisan positions. Why compromise or moderate your views when your district has been specifically designed to reward extremism? Why listen to opposing viewpoints when the district boundaries ensure those voices are marginalized? Gerrymandering doesn’t just skew election outcomes—it warps the entire incentive structure that’s supposed to make representatives responsive to their constituents’ needs.

This creates what philosophers might call a “legitimacy crisis.” If democratic governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, what happens when the process for determining that consent has been systematically manipulated? The result is a government that may be legally constituted but lacks moral authority, a system that follows the forms of democracy while abandoning its substance.

The Lasting Scars on American Democracy

The long-term effects of gerrymandering metastasize through the political system like a cancer, creating damage that persists long after individual district maps are redrawn. When districts are gerrymandered to be non-competitive, representatives don’t have to moderate their positions or compromise with opponents. This leads to increased partisanship and political polarization, as politicians can take extreme positions without fear of electoral consequences.

The psychological impact on voters is equally corrosive. When people see districts that look like abstract art projects rather than coherent communities, when they realize their votes have been diluted through packing or cracking, cynicism becomes the natural response. Why participate in a process that seems rigged from the start? Why invest emotional energy in campaigns when the outcome has been predetermined by mapmakers in back rooms?

This cynicism creates a vicious cycle. As voter participation declines, especially in gerrymandered districts where outcomes seem predetermined, the remaining participants tend to be the most partisan voters on both sides. This further incentivizes extreme positions and reduces the likelihood that moderate, compromise-oriented candidates will emerge. The center doesn’t just fail to hold—it gets actively carved away by district boundaries designed to eliminate competitive races.

The damage extends beyond individual elections to the very fabric of democratic governance. When large numbers of citizens feel their votes don’t matter, when communities are arbitrarily divided by political considerations rather than natural boundaries or common interests, the social bonds that hold democratic societies together begin to fray. People stop seeing themselves as part of a common democratic project and start viewing politics as a zero-sum game where the only goal is to win power and use it against their opponents.

Texas 35th: A Case Study in Democratic Vandalism

The Texas 35th Congressional District serves as a perfect specimen of how gerrymandering operates in practice, like a particularly grotesque exhibit in a museum of democratic pathology. The district was ranked by the National Journal as one of the ten most contorted congressional districts following the 2010 redistricting cycle. Looking at this district on a map produces a visceral reaction—your eyes follow the thin corridor that snakes between major metropolitan areas, and you can literally feel the artificial nature of the boundaries.

The 35th District includes portions of San Antonio’s primarily Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, then stretches north through thin strips of rural counties before reaching parts of Austin. The district roughly follows Interstate 35, connecting two major cities while carefully avoiding suburban areas that might vote differently. It’s a masterpiece of packing strategy—take Democratic-leaning communities from two different metropolitan areas and string them together with a corridor so narrow it barely exists on the ground.

The human impact of this cartographic manipulation is profound. Imagine you’re a resident of East Austin trying to find common ground with constituents in San Antonio’s South Side, over 100 miles away. What shared interests do these communities have beyond the fact that they tend to vote for Democratic candidates? How can one representative effectively serve such geographically and culturally disparate areas? The district makes a mockery of the concept that representatives should serve coherent communities with shared interests and concerns.

Courts have repeatedly found problems with the district’s design, ruling in 2017 that it was drawn with discriminatory intent. But here’s the kicker—even when courts intervene, the process of creating new districts often takes years, during which time the gerrymandered boundaries remain in effect. It’s like being told the poison you’ve been drinking is illegal, but you still have to keep drinking it until the regulators can agree on what the antidote should look like.

The Global Context: Democracy Under Siege

What makes American gerrymandering particularly galling is that it’s not an inevitable feature of democratic systems. Many other democracies have found ways to conduct redistricting that prioritize fairness over partisan advantage. Countries like Canada and Australia use independent commissions or mathematical formulas to create districts, removing the process from direct political control.

The fact that solutions exist makes American gerrymandering not just a technical problem but a moral choice. Every decade, we collectively decide whether to prioritize partisan advantage or democratic fairness. Every legislative session where gerrymandering reform is blocked represents a conscious decision to perpetuate a system that undermines the very principles we claim to cherish.

This choice becomes even more stark when we consider the global context in which American democracy operates. As authoritarian movements gain strength worldwide, the United States increasingly finds itself in the position of promoting democratic values abroad while tolerating anti-democratic practices at home. How can we credibly advocate for fair elections in other countries when our own electoral districts are systematically manipulated for partisan gain?

The hypocrisy is suffocating. We condemn electoral manipulation in countries like Hungary and Poland while allowing our own politicians to engage in sophisticated vote dilution schemes that would make those foreign authoritarians jealous. The difference is largely one of technique rather than intent—American gerrymandering may be more sophisticated and legally sanctioned, but it serves the same fundamental purpose of entrenching political power against the popular will.

Conclusion: The Continuing Corruption of Consent

Gerrymandering represents one of the most insidious threats to American democracy precisely because it operates through legal mechanisms and technical complexity that obscure its fundamentally anti-democratic nature. Unlike more obvious forms of electoral manipulation—voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, or vote buying—gerrymandering hides behind mathematical formulas and technical jargon that make it seem like a mere procedural matter rather than a systematic assault on democratic representation.

The Texas 35th District and districts like it across the country stand as monuments to the corruption of democratic consent. Every time these serpentine boundaries are redrawn to serve partisan ends rather than community interests, we chip away at the foundation of legitimate democratic government. Every election held in a gerrymandered district is an election where some voices count more than others, where geographical accident becomes political destiny, where the form of democracy persists while its substance slowly bleeds away.

The stench of this corruption will continue to pollute American politics until we decide that fair representation matters more than partisan advantage, that democratic legitimacy is more important than electoral engineering, and that the right to vote meaningfully is too fundamental to be sacrificed on the altar of political convenience. Until that day comes, we’ll continue to live with the sickening knowledge that our democracy is being carved up like a carcass by politicians who have forgotten that they serve the people, not the other way around.

The taste of that knowledge—bitter as burnt coffee, heavy as lead in your stomach—should motivate every American who gives a damn about democracy to demand better. Because if we don’t, we’ll wake up one day to discover that we’ve allowed politicians to gerrymander away not just our districts, but our democracy itself.

Citations:

1. Brennan Center for Justice. “Gerrymandering Explained.”