Gerrymandering is one of those structural problems that come with a democracy: the winners literally get to draw the map. However, the question of whether or not gerrymandering is right, wrong, or ethical, gets bogged down in a discussion about demographics or geography, so — since School House Rock! isn’t being produced any longer — it’s important that the public has important topics explained clearly in non-partisan ways.
Enter John Oliver.
The British comedian took nearly the whole runtime of Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight to do a deep dive on gerrymandering, which Oliver describes as “drawing voting districts in a way that creates unfair advantages to whoever happens to be drawing the line.” Oliver says that while it’s not illegal to redraw voting districts along party lines, it’s one of the reasons Republicans have been able to control Congress. Oliver cites Pennsylvania and Ohio as two states where the disproportion between Republican voters and Republican representatives is especially extreme because of gerrymandering.
Oliver explains that most states’ laws call for legislators to draw the maps themselves, something that both parties take full advantage of while using a technique called packing and cracking, which he compares to seating assignments at a wedding: you can spread out certain voting groups over districts or bunch them up together. Either way, their impact is lessened. As a clip shows, a university professor quotes a visiting British politician who surmises, “That’s not the voters choosing their representatives, that’s the representatives choosing their voters.”
Redrawing voting districts is an important, necessary thing. As another clip shows, the country can’t use a grid system because the U.S. population is spread out unevenly and in communities that are irregularly shaped. However, since the primary function of gerrymandering is to maintain holds on power for one party over another, it’s likely that the solution lies with independent bodies or the Supreme Court.
Then, surrounded by a Juggalo, a Santacon attendee, a man in a fedora, a Jill Stein voter, and many more, Oliver ends his segment with a cogent thought: “Election results should not be the fault of lawmakers’ crazy lines, they should be the result of our own crazy decisions.”
The whole segment is worth a watch. You just might learn something in between the laughs.