Worst Gerrymandering

[c9]

Just found this awesome/awful image of six badly gerrymandered congressional districts in the US. Gerrymandering is the redrawing of electoral boundaries to effect a change in voting patterns -- for example, to put all the blacks or evangelicals in one place or to spread them out, which dramatically changes potential results. *sigh*



You can see maps of Canada's ridings on the Elections Canada Electoral Districts site. I don't think Canada has many bad ones, since Elections Canada is independent (despite what the Tories currently are claiming in court). Examples of a few ridings: my riding of Toronto Danforth, our largest riding of Nunavut, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's riding of Calgary Southwest -- for fun, check out the very short candidates list! Also, here's a giant map of the results from the last election (PDF).

Comments

[lifein2x3.livejournal.com]

That's what happened here in Virginia's 3rd district. It's represented by a black Democrat, Bobby Scott, whose district also used to include Isle of Wight County, my home county which is 61% white and 61% Republican. Said county now lies in the 4th district, which has a solid Republican majority and has elected a conservative Republican, Randy Forbes, every election since the gerrymander in 2000.

The only thing my district, the 3rd, has in common is the James River and poor black people in majority-black Surry & Charles City counties and the inner-city areas of Richmond, Portsmouth, Norfolk & Newport News. I think they added Prince George and New Kent counties to have some token white people.