Geography King - Gerrymandering: How to Manipulate Maps for Political Gain (With Tutorial!)

 Another great video on gerrymandering. While Geography King does look at Illinois' Congressional map and other states such as Kentucky & Louisiana to see how their maps appear to be drawn to insure political power.

Current Illinois Congressional Districts

One example he gives is looking at the neighboring state of Indiana. That state's congressional map is actually drawn by a computer. However, he uses this site https://davesredistricting.org/ to gerrymander Indiana's districts insuring that no Democrats can get elected to Congress.

I suppose that's the thing about gerrymandering. You have to know which areas will vote for whom. Cities generally will tilt Democrat while rural areas will generally tilt Republican. Indiana is basically a red state thought with blue or liberal enclaves such as Indianapolis in addition to areas like Gary, Lafayette, or even Bloomington - the latter two are college towns.

The trick is to dilute their strength and basically drown them out with those areas that are solidly Republican or conservative. And if nothing else create a district that is competitive where a Democrat would have to fight to win that district.

That's the thing about gerrymandering, as he puts it the politician chooses his voters and not the other way around.

Check out his almost hour long presentation [VIDEO]

As far as his thoughts on Illinois Congressional map. I really wanted to figure out how to use Dave's Redistricting to draw not just the Congressional Map, but also the state legislative map which is also available there.

Basically in this state redistricting is controlled by the Illinois General Assembly and that means whoever controls the legislature controls the map.

Geography King doesn't understand why the map of the Chicago area was so heavily gerrymandered considering Democratic strength there. Here's the answer I can provide the map was draw with consideration for the election of Latinos and Blacks. The maps were drawn to insure minority representatives are sent to Congress.

Basically what if this state's political districts would look if they weren't drawn for merely insuring certain results as would be the case with gerrymandering. Perhaps draw districts like we see in Indiana, basically what if Illinois was able to draw fair maps?

Would the races for Congress or even the General Assembly be more competitive if there were fair maps in this state?

I need to sign up to that redistricting site and play around with it a bit.