Once every 10 years, following the decennial U.S. Census, all states are authorized to “redistrict,” or draw new territorial lines to reflect population changes, but this alteration can very quickly and covertly lead to altercation through the corrupt practice of “gerrymandering,” which refers to the manipulation of government boundaries to give advantage to a certain political party, even if that means disregarding the true majority vote. If you haven’t heard the word before now, you may want to pause and take note of it as the phenomenon is taking over political media after being adopted by the state of Texas in favor of the Republican party, Democratic California in retaliation, and now, possibly our own North Carolina.
For context, this redistricting round is happening prematurely, only five years after the last census, as requested by President Donald Trump in “preparation” for the 2026 Midterm Election in which the members of Congress are elected. President Trump’s seeming objective with this order is to gain a Congressional Republican majority by voting day through gerrymandering, and Texas was the first state to answer his call. Texas’ recent redistricting has resulted in their formerly 25-13 Republican margin rising to an astounding 30-8 Republican domination in the House of Representatives. This is causing national uproar as the new district lines have also managed to racially discriminate. Hispanic Texans have been limited to 0.3%, and Black Texans, even further, to a mere 0.2% of the political influence of their Caucasian counterparts, despite the fact that White citizens make up only 40% of the Texas population. Thinking historically, this means that one Black vote in Texas now is worth less than a Black vote in the 1780’s under the ⅗ compromise, when slavery ruled America and only White, landowning, Christian males could secure a full vote.
“We have not seen a map this deliberately engineered by skin color since the days that brought Americans to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in the 1960’s,” Texas Representative Vince Perez said.
To “level the playing field,” California, being a largely democratic state, countered Texas’ redistricting with an effort of their own: Proposition 50. The amendment, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, was made to combat Trump’s tyrannical agenda, but is being hypocritically sued by his administration and followed by Republican redistricting in Missouri and a plethora of other states ready to join the fight. The dominos have already been flicked and there is no mediator to stand the Democratic and Republican “blocks” up before ruin. This said, there is no doubt that the American government is facing internal warfare. Although there might not be any signs of physical turmoil or bloodshed, the conflict’s perpetuation is detrimental and practically inevitable, especially because of how easy new technologies have made gerrymandering.
“With GIS, the Geographic Information System, it’s a few clicks of a button and they can go down a street and put my house in a Republican district and your house in a Democrat district. And they do so with surgical precision,” Social Studies Department Chair Debra Troxell said.
North Carolina is another state taking full advantage of GIS, and is even said to be the state most heavily impacted by the post-midterm gerrymandering.
“I think when you have somebody who says, on a national level, they need more seats in order to keep it, then you automatically know what people are gonna do in Raleigh, especially with this majority. I mean, the person [Phil Berger] who called it together, look how many times he’s redrawn his district. He used to have to go through Guildford and he doesn’t anymore,” English Department Chair Stuart Egan said.
Although district lines may look normal, the current and upcoming NC map for 2026 are specifically tailored to assure Republicans at least 10 out of the 14 congressional races. This guarantees Republicans an upper-hand on the federal level. NC’s gerrymandering history can be traced back to the financial crisis of 2008, where voters swung much more conservative than previously seen for economic reasons, causing the General Assembly to carry a more Republican outlook going into the redistricting of 2010. This began the cycle of Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina leading up to this point, taking the parties from an even 7-7 tie to, now, a quite exceptional 10-4 Republican advantage, going from one of the fairest maps in the U.S. to one of the most biased. For example, the new map divides Black communities in the Piedmont Triad, whereas before they had been held as one, diverse district, further confining minority voters to suppression through the method of “packing,” creating almost a sense of modern segregation.
North Carolina, the very state in which we live, paints a perfect picture of governmental maneuvering in all of its corruption, and the misrepresentation that comes with it. How can we expect to preserve our reputation as the “land of the free” when that ‘land’ is being manipulated to silence and subjugate its people; The People? Gerrymandering is just one way our country’s long-earned and celebrated “peace” is slowly, but surely, decaying, as our democracy begins looking more like despotism day after day. The only way to combat gerrymandering is to enforce laws against it and have non-partisan organizations draw district lines, but that power lies ultimately in the hands of the perpetrator.
