[kruipen]

What is wrong with gerrymandering?

It is a political solution to political problem. It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People" but with a built in delaying mechanism to smooth out changes. It generally leads to competitive (but not toss-up) districts (the goal is to get as many seats as possible so huge margins are wasteful).

What's not to like?

[Floegipoky]

The problem is that it prevents people from voting out representatives that fail to advocate for their constituents and represent their interests. The entire concept of a representative democracy is that we elect people to represent our interests, and then if they fail they can be voted out when their term ends. With gerrymandering on the table, they're able to almost literally move the goalposts. It also violates the principle of "one person, one vote", because politicians are manipulating districts to essentially make votes opposing them meaningless. This is the reasoning that was recently used to reject Wisconsin's redistricting, specifically because they exceeded a reasonable "efficiency gap"- the number of votes wasted in a district.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisco...

>>It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People"...

I would love for you to elaborate a little more about this. I happen to think that it does the opposite by making representatives less accountable to their constituents (they can just pick new ones).

In general, it seems like a mechanism designed to advance the power of a given political party by repressing the will of the people. That just doesn't seem like it can possibly lead to better outcomes.