Where Power is Drawn
Gerrymandering shapes access to everything around us
Too long, didn’t read:
Gerrymandering goes back to 1812, when a Massachusetts district was shaped like a salamander to give one party an edge. It’s been a political tool used by both sides ever since.
While not called the same thing, gerrymandering isn’t limited to the United States. Post-WWII Eastern Europe led the USSR to manipulate lines to get access to valuable resources, and left Central Asia handling water conflicts once the superpower was dissolved.
We argue gerrymandering isn’t limited to votes. The same line-drawing can apply to water, land, and even economic resources.
Gerry-what?
Calling gerrymandering a hot topic is an understatement. According to Merriam-Webster (yes, it’s in the dictionary), gerrymandering is the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections. From its origins in the early 1800s to today’s razor-thin races, drawing lines on a map has long been a political weapon. Both parties have embraced and condemned it depending on who benefits. These days, politicians rarely admit they’re “gerrymandering.” Instead, they talk about “updating” or “fixing” district boundaries. But voters aren’t fooled. Most people understand that the way districts are drawn can tilt the playing field long before a single ballot is cast.
But this line-drawing game doesn’t stop with congressional seats. It shows up in the borders of water districts, natural resource districts, and even school and hospital districts that decide who gets access to what. Industrial hubs have seen lines drawn to funnel funding toward manufacturing, just as agricultural regions have watched maps shift to strengthen or weaken farm voices in Congress. The lines on a map can determine not just who holds office, but who controls land, water, and the flow of money.
Gerrymandering’s political roots
Gerrymandering has deep roots in U.S. history. The term itself comes from an 1812 “Gerry-mander” cartoon, satirizing a Massachusetts district contorted (like a salamander) to favor Gov. Elbridge Gerry’s party.
Since then, politicians have been tempted to “choose their voters” by drawing odd-shaped districts that all but guarantee outcomes. This is a bipartisan game; both Republicans and Democrats engage in gerrymandering whenever they have the chance. If you’re a Democrat in a blue state, you tend to love the map you drew; if you’re a Republican in a red state, you love your map. The recent example of Texas redistricting and the California response shows this very clearly. The common techniques are “packing” (cramming your opponents’ voters into a few districts) and “cracking” (splitting opposing voters across many districts) to dilute their influence.
This practice has only intensified in recent years. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymanders can’t be challenged in federal court, mapmakers grew even bolder. This resulted in skewed maps where elections can almost be decided before a single vote is cast, and whole communities find themselves politically carved up. But gerrymandering’s impact doesn’t end with election results. It ripples into how resources are allocated and who gets a voice in policy debates. In other words, the same mapping tricks used to secure votes can also secure advantages in agriculture, water, and industry.
Gerrymandering spans the globe
Gerrymandering might seem like an American invention, but drawing lines to gain an advantage is a global phenomenon. History offers stark examples. After World War II, Joseph Stalin obsessively redrew borders across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, not only to expand Soviet territory, but to divide and destabilize populations. These new lines deliberately mixed or separated ethnic groups in a classic “divide-and-rule” strategy. The goal: set ethnic communities against each other so they couldn’t unite against Moscow’s influence. In making border changes, Stalin had an eye on natural resources and strategic assets as well. For instance, he shifted Soviet republic boundaries to secure oil fields and warm-water ports for the USSR. In one case, Stalin united the Azerbaijani-populated areas across borders specifically to bring additional oil reserves under Soviet control. In another, he sought to make an entire sea (the Sea of Okhotsk) effectively a Soviet lake. The new map lines achieved his security and resource goals, but they left a legacy of geopolitical tension. Some countries emerged from this era with awkward borders that lacked access to key resources.
For decades, Moscow had treated water as a regional utility. Reservoirs built in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan fed vast irrigation networks that stretched into the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and the grain lands of Kazakhstan. Nobody cared that the pipelines and canals crossed internal borders, because the whole system was centrally managed. But when internal borders hardened into international ones, reality shifted overnight. Suddenly, the upstream countries held the keys to the dams, while their downstream neighbors were left bargaining for the flows that kept their farms alive. The result? Unequal leverage at the negotiating table, constant disputes, and water deliveries that often came too little, too late, or were tainted by poor quality. Farmers downstream found themselves living with the consequences of decisions made decades earlier, when planners in Moscow prioritized economic output over the natural geography of rivers and basins. And more than thirty years later, the region is still grappling with the legacy of those mismatched lines.
Gerrymandering beyond politics
When we hear “district,” we usually think of voting districts. But not all districts are electoral – some are drawn purely to manage resources. In the United States, water and land management often rely on their own mapped zones. And just like political districts, how those lines are drawn can create winners and losers.
Case 1: Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts (NRDs). Nebraska took a unique approach in the 1970s by establishing 23 Natural Resources Districts. These are local governance units for soil and water conservation. Crucially, these districts were drawn along river basin boundaries, not county lines. The idea was to manage resources based on natural watersheds. Each NRD has an elected board with authority to allocate groundwater, limit well drilling, levy taxes for projects, and enforce conservation rules. In essence, if your farm lies within the boundary of a given NRD, that local board decides how much water you can pump and what practices you must follow. Drawing the boundaries around watersheds was meant to be fair. Most people who rely on the same river basin or the portion of an aquifer within a given Natural Resources District are managed by the same NRD board, since NRD boundaries are based on watershed lines, not county borders. However, some aquifers and water-quality issues cross NRD boundaries, so not everyone using the same groundwater resource will always fall under a single management authority. This avoids the situation where an upstream county overuses water while a downstream county runs dry. By basing districts on hydrology, Nebraska tried to ensure resource decisions match natural conditions. Of course, even watershed-based lines have consequences: if a particularly valuable resource (say, an especially full section of the Ogallala Aquifer) lies inside one district, that district’s residents hold greater sway over that water. Farmers inside the boundary might welcome stricter pumping limits to sustain their wells, while those just outside could have less say, even if they share the underground water indirectly. The NRD system shows that how we draw resource districts can directly affect who gets a seat at the table for managing vital assets. And Nebraska isn’t alone, numerous other states manage their water similarly.
Case 2: California’s Water Districts. In the western U.S., water is so critical that entire authorities are created to manage its delivery. California, in particular, is a patchwork of regulatory authorities, some small, some enormous, that don’t always align with city or county lines. And there’s debate over whether some of those lines were drawn to favor certain powerful interests. Take the Westlands Water District in California’s Central Valley. Big landowners formed Westlands in the 1950s, and it serves more than 1,000 square miles of farmland. Why draw such a huge district? Aside from geographic rationale, uniting that vast area under one district gave Westlands farmers collective clout to secure federal irrigation water. In fact, Westlands now holds a permanent contract for up to 1.15 million acre-feet of water per year – more than double what Los Angeles uses in a year. Thanks to the district’s clout, its growers gained extraordinary control over a massive water supply. Critics have long argued that Westlands’ boundaries (and those of other large water districts) were drawn because valuable resources lay within. By encircling the fertile west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Westlands ensured that water from federal projects would be largely dedicated to those lands and not to surrounding communities.
If a prominent farming bloc can draw a district line around itself and thereby claim the lion’s share of a river or aquifer, that’s effectively gerrymandering of natural resources. If you live inside such a resource district, you might have reliable water delivered and political leverage to keep it that way. If you live outside, you could be left high and dry.
The industry effect
Political lines on a map can also group (or split) economic engines. Heavy industrial regions can end up concentrated in a single district or carved into pieces, and both scenarios carry consequences. Lawmakers know that a district full of factories and blue-collar neighborhoods has different needs (and opportunities) than one of suburbs or farms. So when drawing maps, there could be a temptation to either isolate these areas or lump them with others, depending on the goal.
One approach is to pack industrial sites together into one district. For example, consider a state legislature drawing a district around Cleveland’s historic manufacturing belt or the steel mills of western Pennsylvania. Cramming as many of those sites as possible into one district can effectively create a representative whose constituency is “all industry, all the time.” That representative, secure in a district dominated by factory workers and an industrial tax base, will fight hard for industry-friendly funding and policies. In fact, channeling a high concentration of industry into a district can attract government investment. A district known as the “industrial hub” might get priority for federal grants to clean up brownfields, new highway projects, or economic redevelopment funds. Recent clean energy investments reveal a surprising trend: many of the congressional districts attracting new cleantech manufacturing projects are represented by Republicans. These districts tend to be industrial or rural areas with ample land, workforce availability, and political willingness to host large-scale projects. Investment flows tend to favor regions that can provide the resources and support for such developments, highlighting how political representation, local capacity and geography have come together to influence the location of the clean energy boom. In short, drawing the lines to include key industrial assets can channel public and private resources into that lucky district.
On the other hand, there’s the tactic of splitting industrial areas among multiple districts, a form of “cracking” not of voters, but of communities with common economic interests. This is often done to dilute the political power of urban, working-class populations (who might demand stricter pollution controls or vote against incumbents). The concerns of the industrial zone, like pollution, brownfield cleanup, and public health, can then be downplayed by a representative whose voters mostly live in cleaner, leafier areas. This kind of gerrymandering can muffle the voice of communities living next to smokestacks. If they were kept intact in one district, they could elect a champion to press for air quality monitoring or cleanup funds if needed. Cracked apart, they’re minority voices in districts dominated by others.
Finally, consider rich value-added agricultural regions that include the packing plants, grain elevators, and ethanol plants that dot rural America. If a powerful lawmaker’s district includes a cluster of corn ethanol plants, you can bet they will fight tooth and nail for favorable renewable fuel policies. Ensuring those facilities are inside one sympathetic district (rather than split among several) might make it easier to secure targeted infrastructure. While hard to prove intent, it’s conceivable that some lines are drawn to concentrate (or dilute) economic power centers, making gerrymandering both about gaining partisan advantage and securing economic opportunity.
How this might affect the farm
All these line-drawing shenanigans come down to a few key things: who represents you in the halls of power, how agricultural policy is shaped and who controls the resources. The Farm Bill is a prime example. For decades, it’s been a bargain between rural lawmakers pushing farm programs and urban lawmakers pushing nutrition assistance. But when gerrymandering eliminates districts that blend farms and cities, the middle ground weakens or even disappears. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota leads a district that spans both suburban and rural communities, but leaders like her are becoming rare. If future maps erase these “bridge” districts, Congress risks splitting into camps that rarely overlap: one focused on crops and insurance, the other on food availability and air quality.
District lines also decide which voices carry weight in resource fights. A watershed split across several districts might leave farmers without strong backing on irrigation, while a unified ag district could produce a loud champion. Likewise, urban concerns about water quality or sustainability can be diluted or overshadowed depending on how the map is drawn. In short, maps can ultimately dictate priorities. The next time an ag bill advances or a water rule shifts, remember: the outcome may trace back to who drew the lines in the first place.
What to do when it gets out of hand
Gerrymandering may start with politics, but it ends with power. We began with a question: If political borders can be drawn to favor certain voters, resources, or industries, who is really deciding the future of your interests? Those who hold the pen in drawing the map hold enormous sway over real-world outcomes. If this makes you uneasy, it should. But it’s also empowering: once we recognize the hidden influence of district lines, we can do something about it. This isn’t Soviet Russia. It’s still the United States, and though we’re working through our fair share of problems today, we the people still have the luxury of participation in these processes. That’s what makes our system great.
First, get informed. Take a closer look at how your own voting districts are drawn. Investigate your local resource districts too: Who decided the boundaries of your water district, or conservation district, and when? Was it done for sound management or possibly to benefit a select group? Public records, local meetings, and independent watchdogs can shed light on these questions.
Second, demand fairness and transparency. Many states and counties are moving toward independent redistricting commissions or clearer criteria (like keeping “communities of interest” together) to curb the worst map tricks. If you’re in agriculture, push to keep farming regions intact when maps are redrawn so that your community’s voice isn’t diluted. At the same time, consider the flip side: truly fair maps might mean rural areas might get somewhat less representation than they do in gerrymandered setups. Fairness ensures everyone’s voice is heard in proportion to their numbers, but there are tradeoffs that must be weighed.
Finally, remember that awareness is the antidote to manipulation. Gerrymandering, political or otherwise, thrives in the shadows of wonky algorithms and opaque deals. By bringing it into the light, we can make it a kitchen-table issue. Talk to your neighbors: Does it make sense that a city 100 miles away shares your district but the valley next door does not? Who benefits from that? Such conversations build pressure for change if change is needed.
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