“Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t win.”
In the United States, North Carolina senate candidate Kate Barr’s campaign slogan is inspired by a quote from the television show Friday Night Lights, but it also reflects the reality she is facing — she cannot win.
The district and state Barr is running in on 5 November, Senate District 37 in North Carolina, are impacted by what’s known as gerrymandering, meaning the result is virtually guaranteed before residents cast their votes.
In the US, state senate races often coincide with , but they have their own framework. Successful candidates go on to represent their districts in the state legislature.
Gerrymandering has been used by both Democrats and Republicans for hundreds of years, and is often referred to as a type of legal vote rigging.
In Barr’s case, she isn’t really running against incumbent Vickie Sawyer, but against the practice.
North Carolina has been gerrymandered by Republicans. Source: SBS News
“District 37 is so gerrymandered that I don’t stand a chance. But we deserve to have two names on the ballot,” her website reads.
“If I’m going to lose, we might as well have a little fun, raise a little hell, and shine a light on the impacts of gerrymandering along the way.”
Barr’s campaign features sparkles, bright colours, catchy slogans and a few swear words — but she is drawing attention to a serious issue.
What is gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering is the process of redrawing voting district lines based on how residents are likely to vote, to virtually guarantee certain results.
District lines can be drawn and changed, meaning whichever party is in power in the state can effectively design electoral maps to favour themselves.
Political parties use data to determine how residents in each area vote and draw districts accordingly, often manipulating boundaries into odd shapes to group like-minded voters together.
It impacts state legislatures and power in US Congress.
Benjamin Reilly, a visiting professor at the United States Study Centre, said gerrymandering has become “a bit of an art form” in some parts of the US.
He said the process is becoming more precise.
“We don’t know how individuals voted, but based on a combination of demographic data, public opinion data, data mined from all sorts of other sources and algorithms applied, you can work out with a fairly high degree of accuracy where your likely voters are,” he told SBS News.
North Carolina, where Barr is campaigning as a Democrat, is one of the strongest examples of Republican gerrymandering. State lines were redrawn in 2023, which meant Barr’s town became part of a Republican district.
The state is a ‘swing state’ and has roughly equal numbers of voters for each party, but Republicans hold 10 of the state’s 13 congressional seats due to how districts are drawn.
While gerrymandering is done by Democrats and Republicans — Illinois and Michigan are both examples of Democrats gerrymandering — Republicans have successfully gerrymandered more states to their advantage.
The practice was named after former Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, who signed off on redrawing the state’s election districts in 1912.
When the redrawing was complete, one of the manipulated districts was said to look like salamander, which was combined with the governor’s name to create the word ‘gerrymander’.
North Carolina is a ‘battleground state’ in the US presidential election.
Why is gerrymandering a problem?
Unlike Australia, the US does not have a national election commission or standards, which means states get to set their own rules.
“Whoever is in power at the state level — in the state legislature — typically gets to draw the lines and gerrymander if they wish for congressional election,” Reilly said.
“So it’s really a matter of which party is in power in the state legislature that gets to determine the nature of the electoral boundaries.”
Gerrymandering effectively guarantees which party is likely to get elected, meaning voters aren’t truly choosing their representatives, Reilly said.
“It’s essentially the politicians who choose their voters; it should be the other way around,” he said.
“Voters should be choosing the politicians. But if you have a highly gerrymandered set of district boundaries, essentially the politicians choose their voters.”
Dr Frank Mols, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Queensland, said gerrymandering was initially designed to address population discrepancies and ensure rural voters were fairly counted.
“It was for a good reason that there was a system that actually tried to calibrate the fact that some sparsely populated regions might have different preferences from very urbanised, densely populated areas,” he said.
Mols said while the initial logic had been “justifiable”, the Republican party had become “more dependent on that tinkering with the system”.
It’s essentially the politicians who choose their voters; it should be the other way around.
Benjamin Reilly, visiting professor at United States Studies Centre
Does gerrymandering happen in Australia?
Gerrymandering could theoretically happen in any two-party democratic system, but the US differs from most given it does not have a national electoral commission.
In Australia, electoral boundaries are drawn by an independent body (the Australian Electoral Commission) rather than political parties.
“The AEC in Australia federally determines electoral boundaries, so gerrymandering could happen potentially, but it’s hard to prove, and it probably is far less prevalent because it’s an independent body that actually draws the boundaries,” Mols said.
Reilly agreed and said while Australia does have “safe seats” that have more members from one political party, this is typically not gerrymandering and borders are not deliberately drawn in this way.
“We have an independent process that involves the electoral commissioner, the chief statistician, and a judge,” he said.
“And they take submissions from the political parties, but ultimately, the decision on the boundaries is made by those individuals.”
He also noted many of the seats in the US election are “really uncompetitive”, and believes winners could be predicted ahead of the vote.
“You pretty much know in advance who’s going to win, and (when) you combine that with a primary system, the end result is not very responsive and in some ways not a very democratic political system,” he said.
“And unfortunately, that’s the situation that Americans are now in.”
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