ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews how manipulation of the layout of electoral districts has been used to influence the distribution of power. Geographers are interested in territorial behavior—how and why people organize themselves on the landscape—as through electoral districts. There are unusual examples of electoral systems in which representation may be granted to groups other than in bounded, territorial districts or political parties. A short historical review of the idea of territorial representation, from the battle over malapportionment to racial discrimination to gerrymandering follows. Gross levels of malapportionment within states and degrees of gerrymandering were routinely criticized throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States. Partisan gerrymandering is not always successful, and its effects can be transient. Evaluation of the 1990s round of redistricting suggests that the magnitude and severity of gerrymandering, for both partisan and territorial discrimination, are undiminished.
