How does gerrymandering violate the "one person-one vote" principle of representation?

Question

How does gerrymandering violate the "one person-one vote" principle of representation?

Answer 1

The statements below are quoted from Political Parties & Elections in the United States, edited by L. Sandy Maisel, c1991.

"Gerrymanders may take various forms.  Packing, or concentrating supporters of one party in a few districts, achieves the same goal as "cracking", or diffusing partisans across several districts.  In each instance, the affected party wins a smaller percentage of seats in the electorate than is proportionate to their strength among the electorate.

... gerrymandering could be subject to constitutional challenge.  In Davis v. Brandemer (1986)...  

An unconstitutional gerrymander, according to the six to three Court majority, must have the intent and effect of discriminating against an identifiable political group and must "consistently degrade a voter's or a group of voters' influence on the political process as a whole" (end quote)

Answer 2

(Using completely arbitrary numbers in my example)

Let's say there are two political parties, A and B.  There are 400,000 people in an area to be split up among 4 districts of 100,000 people each.  Politically, the two parties are split 50/50.  Party  A currently dominates the political environment.

Theoretically, in this environment, each party should have a good chance of gaining 2 seats in any given election, but all seats are probably in play.

However, party A is able to gerrymander the districts, and creates one district where the population is 80% party B.  The other 3 districts are broken down evenly between what's left of each party.

District 1: 20% party A, 80% party B

District 2: 60% party A, 40% party B

District 3: 60% party A, 40% party B

District 4: 60% party A, 40% party B

So, by concentrating party B members through gerrymandering, party A is able to create 3 reasonably safe districts for itself.  The 20,000 party A members in District 1 don't really have much say in its representation, but neither do the 120,000 members of party B in the other Districts.

Answer 3

I don't think that gerrymandering per se violates one person one vote (OPOV)(god I hate that rule.  Ever heard of the US Senate?)  

OPOV just means that all of your districts have to have more or less the same population.  Theoretically, you could gerrymander and still keep the right amount of people in each district.

Answer 4

CAUTION, I'm no expert here!

I thought it meant country votes are worth more.

Are you Australian?

Joe Bejelki Peterson, introduced the gerrymander to QLD.

No one could get rid off him for 18 yrs

Premier of QLD.

He had the country vote & it was worth x amount more than city votes. National Party lots of corruption.

DON'T QUOTE ME

Answer 5

voting in the US is done by representation, not direct voting.  In other words, each district in your state has unique votes.  Gerrymandering is the redrawing of district lines to get certain types of voters in certain districts.  In other words, by changing the borders of your district, a politican can get majorities of votes in places where previously he/she received few or none.  One might put a district line between a wealthy part of a town and a poor part of the town to capture more of the wealthy votes in a key district.

One person one vote is violated because gerrymandering changes majorities.

Answer 6

It artificially manipulates representation for political  purposes. So yes, in spirit it does.