Next year, state lawmakers will redraw the congressional district maps based on the 2020 census, a process mandated by the Constitution. In anticipation of this new redistricting cycle, Slate is revamping our gerrymander puzzle game from 2013 as part of our Who Counts? initiative. We’ll be releasing new puzzles over the upcoming weeks, highlighting the worst and weirdest gerrymanders in the country. Find out how quickly you can put these states back together and learn everything that’s at stake in the next round of redistricting.
In 2011, Georgia Republicans gained full control of redistricting for the first time and immediately began gerrymandering Democrats out of power. Once Republicans revealed their new congressional maps, Democrats howled in opposition: Predictably, mapmakers had packed Democrats into blue districts and then sprinkled the rest throughout red districts. In a state like Georgia, where race and partisanship are closely aligned, that meant cramming black communities into as few districts as possible. Rep. John Lewis described the map as “an affront to the spirit and the letter of the Voting Rights Act.”
For three election cycles, the map held firm. But as the decade progressed, Republicans’ gerrymander began to teeter as suburban whites swung left in a revolt against Trump. In 2018, Democrat Lucy McBath captured the majority-white 6th District. Presuming Republicans maintain control of the state legislature in 2020, they’ll likely tweak their congressional gerrymander to dilute the votes of those suburban white people who fled the GOP under Trump.
Was this one too easy? Try the rest of our gerrymander puzzles here.
