Gerrymandering is probably the single most important issue in our democracy. It makes the House unrepresentative: democrats routinely win a higher percentage o

Gerrymandering is probably the single most important issue in our democracy. It makes the House unrepresentative: democrats routinely win a higher percentage of the total vote cast for the House than their representation by number of seats (in 2014 republicans won 52% of the vote but controlled 57% of seats, couldn't find a number for this election season sadly). Effectively, democrats aren't democratically represented in the House. It contributes to extremism: in 2014 only 16 of 247 republicans in the house won by less than 10 percentage points. In that scenario, the only real election is the primary, where you're competing against someone of your own party. Typically only the most committed (usually the least moderate) voters come out in primaries, so you're more likely to lose to someone more extreme than to someone more moderate. As a result we get people that are completely unwilling to compromise, and government grinds to a halt. We can't have good government without two (or more, but never gonna happen in the US) reasonably functional parties that are willing to compromise to get stuff done. Partisan gerrymandering massively impedes that objective by reducing effective representation and increasing extremism. This guy also seems to think it's pretty important: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/10/17/obamas-post-presidency-political-focus-redistricting/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/10/17/...