this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Let’s say you have 2 districts (A & B) that border each other. And let’s say each district has 100 voters:
R & D tied. 1 district each.
If R wants to win both, they redraw the line to give district B some of district A’s voters:
R just won both districts due to gerrymandering
So who redraws them and who gave them the right? And why does it always seem Republicans always wanting to do it?
Who ever is in power at the time unfortunately. California and Texas have both been in the news over redrawing their districts recently to give themselves an advantage. Each side gerrymanders so they won’t agree to abolish it.
There’s a bunch of factors but if I had to choose one reason, it boils down to low voter turnout. In the example I gave above, imagine that the 100 voters in each district was less than half of the eligible registered voters in each district.
Gerrymandering doesn’t mean you automatically win, it just means you have an advantage. If a district has a lot of swing voters or higher voter turnout than usual, it can work against the party in power that redrew the lines.
It would be very difficult to truly "abolish" gerrymandering because there's no one objectively fair way to drive lines on a map. Some states have tried to make it more fair by opening proposed maps up to outside nonpartisan bodies for approval (which is why California needed a special ballot measure to even be able to consider their current gerrymandering scheme), but there's never going to be a perfect way to carve up a map and let everyone in it feel equally represented.
Abolish gerrymandering by abolishing those lines on the map.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
This is it. The solution is super easy.