“Your vote is so much bigger than you. It’s about the environment. It’s about dreamers. It’s about gerrymandering,” said Braxton Brewington, a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who participated and helped lead a march for changing voting districts in Raleigh, North Carolina. He, along with many, many others throughout the country believe that gerrymandering is unjust and needs to be ended. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to gerrymander is “to divide (a territorial unit) into election districts to give one political party an electoral majority”. Gerrymandering first appeared in the United States 1788 during the congressional election between James Madison and James Monroe. It was ineffective, but still…show more content… Not long after, the Boston Gazette published a newspaper with the headline “The Gerry-mander”, referring to the governor's last name and the salamander shape. Gerrymandering has been used throughout all of United States history, despite all of its flaws. Although it appears that gerrymandering is fair in that one party gets to redraw the boundaries when in power, just as the opposite party did before them, in reality gerrymandering is unjust in a number of ways.
First, gerrymandering is unfair as it reduces the power of an individual in a democracy; what is the point in casting your vote if you know that your vote will not make an impact on the election? Gerrymandering results in people’s votes not making as large of an impact. One way this happens is because of “wasted votes”. A wasted vote is the effect of a partisan gerrymander, and forces the other side to “waste” some of their votes, meaning that it does not contribute to winning an additional district. (Cohn). These kinds of votes could happen in three different ways. One is all of the votes that are cast for the unsuccessful candidate. Another is all of the “extra”