 Why this issue is important...
Some people falsely claim that gerrymander is not an important issue nor cause for concern. They claim that voter demographics, especially where voters of each party choose to live in greater numbers, is the dominant factor. These people are either misinformed or intentionally trying to deceive the public. If gerrymander had no significant impact on election outcomes and the dominant or only factor were voter demographics, then the United States would not have a long and continuing history of political battles including court challenges between the parties and various other political organizations over redistricting maps.Gerrymander differs from voter demographics by giving the majority party an artificially large number and proportion of election districts and legislative and congressional seats that it controls. Thus, a party that receives a small majority of all votes in an election is guaranteed an artificially large majority of seats. This leads to single party control in what is supposed to be a multi-party representative system of self-government. Some people argue that gerrymandering does not constitute election fraud and corruption, and is not the equivalent of stealing elections, because it is legal and is made possible by a long-established political process. However, gerrymandering should be considered a form of election fraud and corruption, even though it is legal until outlawed by legislation, a voter initiative, or a court decision. The artificially wide vote count spreads resulting from gerrymandering show that gerrymandering is significantly more effective at changing election outcomes than other methods of election theft, which are usually effective only in close elections. In gerrymandered election districts, the general election outcome is already determined by the district boundary lines before the election takes place. The citizens' votes only make a difference in the primary election where the voters of each party select their candidate to run in the general election. Furthermore, in closed primary elections, only voters of the majority party for a given district have any influence in the primary election outcome and therefore in the general election outcome. Source: www.fraudfactor.com/ffgerrymander.html
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