How does gerrymandering work?
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Say you have a country that is divided into 4 regions and a total population of 1000. Every region must have 250 residents and appoints a leader through “majority wins” elections in that region. The population is divided in 460 “orange party” and 540 “purple party” supporters.
From purples point of view, they’d like the regions divided such that each region has 135 purple supporters – thus guaranteeing them leadership in all 4 regions.
From oranges point of view, their ideal situation would be 3 regions with at least 126 supporters and therefore they’d have 3 leaders and purple only 1.
Gerrymandering is a political process where both parties deliberately (and sometimes illegitimately) try to draw regional boundaries to maximize the election outcomes by concentrating and/or diluting the representation of their supporters and opponents.
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