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In response to
"gerrymandering would be more irrelevant if there were enough congressional districts to support tripling the number of reps -- (link)"
by
hollywood big shot
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I think more districts would generally increase the opportunities for gerrymandering.
Posted by
Roger More (aka RogerMore)
Mar 16 '23, 09:40
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Consider a state with 100k voters, 60K who vote for Party X and 40K who vote for Party Y, and five districts.
Under this scenario Party Y could conceivably win a 3-2 majority through gerrymandering (2 seats with 20K votes for Party X, and 3 that would be won by Party Y with 13,3K votes against Party X's 6.7K votes)
A 3-2 majority is great but at 3-2 there's always the risk of a swing vote. And no matter how they gerrymander they wouldn't get to 4 districts out of five.
With 10 districts of 10K voters each, and the right gerrymandering, Party Y could win 7/10 seats (3 seats with 10K votes for Party X and 7 seats with 5700 votes for Party Y over 4300 for Party X). No single elected member would be able to change the outcome, so there's more incentive to follow the party line, and the outcome is a much more stable majority for the gerrymandering party
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