When looking at a U.S. map, it is important to recognize the state borders almost never change. However, when looking inside a state, there are many separate regions called districts. Each district has one representative that goes to the electoral college. These borders change every 10 years during the census, because it is important to recognize that population sizes change each decade. In total, there are 435 districts in the 50 states, which equals 435 electoral votes. This is over 80% of the total number of votes in the electoral college, which makes it very important to keep the district borders fair and legitimate. However, that is not the case, as gerrymandering occurs, which is when district borders are unethically manipulated by legislators and politicians to create an unfair election.

The word gerrymandering has origins back to 1812, when politician Elbridge Gerry had committed such an extreme case of gerrymandering that his district looked like a salamander. Hence came the term, “Gerry’s Salamander”, or now gerrymander. However, many sources say that people have committed gerrymandering ever since the English colonists started coming to the U.S. At that time, borders were still somewhat normal looking, and it had not affected elections too much. However, as time went on, it progressively got more and more extreme. Eventually, in 1812, the Republicans won 29 out of 40 seats in the senate, even though they only received 49 percent of the total votes. Of course, this was all due to manipulated borders in the election. Gerrymandering died down a bit, until black men had acquired the right to vote. Most black men supported the republican party, while white men were mostly democratic. Racism was still strong at this time, even though black people had acquired many rights, and some white people still wanted to suppress black people in any way they could. Gerrymandering was used to pack all of the black votes into one large district so the white votes could win all of the other districts. This continued until the early 19th century, where black voters stopped voting due to threats and taxes. Then, when the Supreme Court ruled in 1960 that states must change their voting districts every 10 years, gerrymandering became popular again, and is still affecting us today. 

Gerrymandering in the current era is stronger than ever and the forces against it are stronger than ever aswell. Many cases of gerrymandering today are fought in a court of law, and some make it to the supreme court. One famous one was Louisiana: Robinson v. Ardoin, where a politician's gerrymandering violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act gave a disadvantage to black voters by packing them in a condensed area. The case was taken to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had agreed that the borders were unfair, and made Louisiana redraw their map. A trial against gerrymandering is Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, where a case of extreme gerrymandering shut down democratic views. This case was taken to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. One case that has made it to the national Supreme court was Alexander v. SC State Conf. of the NAACP,  Here, the South Carolina NAACP had argued that South Carolina’s districts were racially gerrymandered, and that many black voter’s power were diluted. The court ruled that South Carolina’s borders were in fact racially gerrymandered, and required them to redraw their borders.