Gerrymandering. Explain this to me like I am 10 years old.

[thatdemguy]

4. Its allowed because

The states are allowed to set up their own rules on how districts are done. Maryland is one of the most obvious when you look at the maps for it. The new map makes much more sense on the layout, go to the link and click on the old map. The state is about 60/40 D/R but there are 8 districts and only was was repub. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/maryland/

Its used two ways, to dilute votes and/or concentrate them. Take 3 areas if they where all 50/50 then you can do two ( well 3 ) things. One would be to concentrate all of one vote in one area and have a 2/1, that makes 3 solid votes, 2 for one party, and one for the other. The other option would be make all 3 areas a fighting chance.

The other things that can be done is to take say a solid area of 75k votes, and put them together with an area that has 90k solid votes for the other party. Sure it seems close on the books, but getting a swing 15k votes is next to impossible. This is done to dilute those votes, but combined with the first part of concentrating the vote, you get maryland.

This is also done on racial lines, spread out as many POC votes over as many districts as possible so they never really get a vote, as they are so diluted. You could also concentrate the POC votes, but to level, say 45%, of the vote that they can be ignored.