Gerrymandering - Packing and Cracking

Packing and Cracking

The two goals of gerrymandering are to maximize the effect of supporters' votes, and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes.

One strategy, packing, is to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts. In some cases, this may be done to obtain representation for a community of common interest (such as to create a majority-minority district), rather than to dilute that interest over several districts to a point of ineffectiveness (and, when minority groups are involved, to avoid possible racial discrimination).

A second strategy, cracking, involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district. An example would be to split the voters in an urban area among several districts where the majority of voters are suburban, on the assumption that the two groups would vote differently, and the majority of suburban voters would elect their candidates of choice.

The strategies are typically combined, creating a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure more seats for greater representation for voters of another type.