Gerrymandering (or, Where Politicians Select the Consituents)

Though the phrase did not originate with Abram Lincoln, he's credited with coining the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people."  He didn't create the phrase, and what I wrote is a paraphrase of a paraphrase.  The point stands, nonetheless.  "Of the People" essentially means that government's authority originates from us.  It's not a rule imposed by external power.  "By the people" means that we choose our leaders.  "For the people, means that government exists to serve OUR needs, such as promoting our rights.

Somewhere along the line, our elected officials succumbed to the trappings of power.  The outcome of this capitulation by our representatives was that they manipulated this power to perpetuate and enhance their control and increase their leverage.

Gerrymandering is a wonderful example of how this power corrupted the government. For those of you not familiar with the concept, Gerrymandering is the manipulation of one or more boundaries in electoral districts to favor one political group.  Gerrymandering works in two ways: One method is to "crack," or spread a group of voters across multiple boundaries, thereby artificially reducing their influence.  The other technique is to "pack" a group of voters into a single district, which provides a synthetic increase in influence.  Either way, the result is nefarious because it creates a situation where elected officials choose their constituents, instead of the people selecting their representative.

Since the 2024 election, the state of Texas is working to gerrymander districts to increase Republican power.  In response, California has threatened to gerrymander districts to increase Democratic representation, with the specifically, publicly stated goal of countering what Texas is doing.

This is stupid, evil and wrong.  The end result is a further perpetuation of entrenched incumbent elected officials, and the disenfranchisement of the non-majority voters in a given district.  Gerrymandering is a perversion of of democracy, and all branches of the government are complicit, including the judicial branches that allow it to continue.