This speaks to the notion that the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a safe seat but to put your opponents in safe seats by cramming all of their supporters into a small number of districts. This lets you spread your own supporters over a larger number of districts. And the way to do this is to draw outlandishly-shaped districts that bring far-flung geographic areas together. North Carolina's 12th district, which holds the title of the nation's most-gerrymandered, is a textbook example of this: It snakes from north of Greensboro, to Winston-Salem, and then all the way down to Charlotte, spanning most of the state in the process.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/15/americas-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts/
This passage from Christopher Ingraham's article, America's most gerrymandered congressional districts", is about how gerrymandering works. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of boundaries in a state in order to benefit a party. This passage notes how the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw boundaries to secure your parties' safety but to secure the opponents' districts. In this article, Christopher Ingraham shows us how bizarre the boundaries drawn for the districts look. He also shows us how years ago, the shapes of the districts were more compact and had shapes to them but as the years have gone by, the shapes have become very strange and far-out.
I chose this passage because it helped me get a better understanding of gerrymandering. I originally thought that if you just create district boundaries that are compact and in one area, it would benefit the party but instead the more spread out, even if its not in a "normal looking" shape, the more beneficial it is to the party because they can reach more supporters. What I did not understand was how the state legislatures draw up the district boundaries. How do they know where these supporters are located? How do they just choose where they want to doodle their boundary lines?
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