As you might have heard in the news, Texas Democrats have fled the state and that has prevented a quorum for the special session called by Abbott. Not having a quorum merely means there aren’t enough legislators, under Texas law, to do normal legislative business. So this has delayed the Republican plan, and as Texas state Democrats refuse to play ball by coming back to Texas, Abbott and others have suggested they be found and arrested or found and forced to come back so a vote can take place on the Republican redistricting plan that supposedly could deliver up to five more Republican members of Congress.

If you are wondering what gerrymandering is, well the term comes from Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry, a founding father and our fifth vice president. But before he became vice president he was a legislator and when creating voting districts, a local newspaper commented on the irregular shape of Gerry’s district saying that it looked like a salamander. Combine aspects of Gerry and the word salamander and the term gerrymandering was born.

Gerrymandering is merely drawing district lines in a way that would favor one political party over another. Both Democrats and Republicans do it, but it is usually done nationally after the census is taken every 10 years and the numbers of representatives are reapportioned.

Reapportionment merely means the number of representatives a state will get via the census results. The next census will be in 2030. There are 435 members of the House of Representatives and this is a fixed number (unless changed by Congress). So if states grow quite a bit they will gain Congressional seats while other states that don’t grow enough, or even decrease in population, will lose seats.

You often hear the phrase, “voters don’t choose their politicians but politicians choose their voters.” This merely means through the redistricting process, gerrymandering takes place so members of one party can get an advantage over the other making many voters feel disenfranchised.

When our country was first formed, a representative represented 30,000 people. Now that total is over 760,000. Whether this is too high and Congress should be expanded is another debate, but for now that is the general mathematics of representation.

So by federal laws there are really only three criteria for drawing district boundaries. These are the population parameters of each district having roughly 760,000 persons and that the boundaries be geographically contiguous, or that a district can’t be physically separated by other districts. It’s this requirement that gets a bit interesting as states in this process create some interesting looking districts. The third element is gerrymandering can also have racial implications. And courts can strike down (proposed) district boundaries if they openly discriminate against racial or ethnic groups.

Gerrymandering is done through two processes called cracking and packing. Where possible the political party in power would like to crack or break the strength of the opposing party in multiple districts thus diluting that minority party’s power. This is what Utah Republicans have done by dividing Salt Lake County, where the majority of Democrats can be found in Utah, into four different districts.

But if the minority party and its voters are too strong, the majority party may sacrifice district(s) by concentrating, or packing, all the minority party voters together leaving more districts safe for the majority party. This is the game plan for Republicans in Texas.

While gerrymandering seems to be part of the political game, it does have some bad side effects.

First, it can leave voters feeling they have no representation which can lead to apathy and other negative political consequences such as low voter turnout.

But as important is that the extreme gerrymandering that has taken place in the last 50 years or so has led to increased polarization in our Congress. The vast majority of congressional districts, because of gerrymandering, are “safe” districts meaning the minority party has little to no chance of unseating the incumbent. In fact, the only thing that usually unseats the incumbent comes from inside the party from candidates that are most often more extreme politically. This makes it harder for Congress to find compromises or even anything resembling bipartisan cooperation.

Gerrymandering can’t completely make sure every seat in Congress is safe but just a small percentage of districts, around 10%, are swing districts where either party has a chance to unseat the other.

Gerrymandering is a scourge on our politics and though it has existed since the early 1800s, it has really evolved in every bad way possible. Now we have a president asking a state to break tradition of when redistricting takes place. We have other states like California and Illinois, controlled by Democrats, threatening to counter. And this all leads to a Congress less willing than ever to work together and that is politically extreme compared to the average voter.

Some solutions to gerrymandering are to create independent commissions rather than state legislatures deciding, which several states do. Utah citizens through an initiative even voted to go that direction only to have state legislators basically find a way to ignore the will of the voters and keep redistricting under their domain.

Some want to involve AI or technology in the process making sure that district boundaries are drawn in ways that for most of us make common sense. That would mean making things like city and county boundaries, and even zip code areas, part of the equation with the end result that neighborhoods and smaller communities aren’t split into differing districts.

Until then, it will be interesting to see what Texas finally does and to see whether Democrat (controlled) states retaliate. The actions of redistricting before the census is highly unusual and a sitting president pushing for it sets a dangerous precedent. The outcome of all of this is that the biggest losers in all of this will be the American people as the extreme factions of both parties will only be more exaggerated in Congress.

Brian E. Preece is a retired social studies educator and coach. As a wrestling coach, he was named as the 2006 Utah Coach of the Year by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. He has also co-authored three books and has been a sports journalist for parts of five decades.