Gerrymandering and GIS: A Comparative Study of India and USA

Partisan gerrymandering has endured its relevance for decades. The implications of gerrymandering are not confined to the clash of ideologies and voter distribution turf among numerous political parties, but they extend to the political misrepresentation of the qualified voting populace. The central ambition of the “Delimitation’ process is to create equitable representation in the democratic society. With the changing population dynamics, alterations in the electoral boundaries to ensure fair representation is a crucial and recurring undertaking. Hence, digital tools can be an extremely potent source for executing electoral boundary redistricting or appropriate distribution of voting precincts. The GIS technology can ensure that boundaries are drawn without any partisan manipulation as it is skilled at generating diverse boundary configurations on the basis of evolving population statistics which can further depoliticize the entire redistricting process carried out by the Independent Redistricting Commission or State Legislature. The technology can transform the way we work. One sole entity could easily generate countless plans and can specify using advanced spatial software the presence of gerrymandering, thereby developing unbiased delimitation proposals. The researcher through this study aspires to offer a detailed explanation of partisan gerrymandering and how it could be combated through the use of geo-spatial technology.