Gerrymandering saps faith in democracy– www.futurity.org
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Excerpt:
When politicians redraw congressional district maps to favor their party, they may secure short-term victories. But those wins can come at a steep price—a loss of public faith in elections and, ultimately, in democracy itself.
That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study led by University of California, Riverside political scientist Shaun Bowler in Political Research Quarterly.
The research finds that partisan gerrymandering—the manipulation of district boundaries to lock in political advantage—does more than distort representation in Congress. It undermines the belief that elections are fair, a cornerstone of democratic legitimacy.
Bowler, a professor of political science, says survey data from tens of thousands of voters in the 2020 and 2022 elections show that Americans view gerrymandering with the same disdain they reserve for bribery and other blatant forms of political corruption. The difference, he says, is that gerrymandering is carried out in full public view, cloaked in arguable legality.
Consider the current push in Texas, where Republican legislators and Governor Greg Abbott, encouraged by President Donald Trump, are working to redraw congressional districts to add five GOP seats as part a Republican effort to retain control of Congress after next year’s midterm election.
“It’s out in the open,” Bowler says. “They’re saying, ‘We’re rigging the midterm election to produce an outcome.’”
