There's a new downloadable font inspired by gerrymandered congressional districts
A graphic designer has now created a gerrymandering-themed font to raise awareness about fair maps.
- The font, which you can download at uglygerry.com, has one or combinations of multiple gerrymandered districts for each letter of the alphabet from A-Z.
- Gerrymandering occurs when legislatures draw districts to benefit one political party over the other.
- The Twitter account associated with the Ugly Gerry font posted about every congressional district used to create the font, and encouraged users to tweet at their representatives about the issue.
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Gerrymandering of legislative districts has received significant attention in the courts and in the public, and one graphic designer has now created a gerrymandering-themed font to raise awareness about fair electoral maps.
The new font, which you can download at uglygerry.com, has one or combinations of multiple gerrymandered congressional districts for each letter of the alphabet from A-Z.
The Twitter account associated with the Ugly Gerry font posted about every congressional district used to create the font, and encouraged users to tweet at their representatives about the issue.
The practice of gerrymandering occurs when legislatures draw districts to benefit one political party over the other by strategically drawing the boundaries of a district to include or exclude certain groups of voters.
The two main methods of gerrymandering are "packing," which refers to groups of people being concentrated in one district, and "cracking," when districts are drawn to deliberately spread out certain populations so they can't vote as a bloc.
Read more: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan warns AI-powered gerrymandering could undermine US democracy
While many of Texas' congressional districts - including the 15th and 12th districts used to make the letters I and Q in the font - are drawn to make sure Republicans are elected in some suburban areas, Maryland's third and seventh districts are drawn to optimize the chances of a Democrat being elected.
The new Ugly Gerry font isn't the first novelty product released to raise awareness about gerrymandering. One group of Texas siblings who grew up in a gerrymandered district in the Austin area created a board game called Mapmaker in which players simulate politicians from different political parties drawing maps, with the object of the game being to draw as many favorable districts as possible.
Two court cases related to fair electoral maps came before the Supreme Court in the past term, one from Virginia and the other from North Carolina.
In the case surrounding North Carolina's maps, the Court's conservative majority ruled 5-4 in a landmark decision to let the maps stand, deciding that the case surrounded a fundamentally political and not legal question. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."
In a scathing dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan blasted politicians that draw gerrymandered districts as having "debased and dishonored our democracy" and warned that the court had gone "tragically wrong" in not striking down the maps, writing, "for the first time in this Nation's history, the majority declares that it can do nothing about an acknowledged constitutional violation."
Read more:
Supreme Court rules 5-4 to allow partisan gerrymandering in congressional maps in landmark case
Gerrymandering is rampant across the US - here's why it has gotten worse in the last 20 years