Gerrymandering is a major factor in the polarization of politics in the US. Our democracy is built on the idea that voters choose the people they feel will best represent their interests, but Gerrymandering ruins this by allowing politicians to manipulate voting districts so that many peoples’ votes stop counting at all.
Accept for the politicians who benefit from it, no one thinks Gerrymandering is a good thing. So why does it keep happening? One of the reasons is that the process of districting is not something that people think about often. Districting happens once every 10 years, and although it’s really important, it’s also complex and abstract. So, most people just ignore it and the problem continues to steadily get worse and worse.
When we read this great article about an a fair and balanced approach to districting, we realized that Gerrymandering could be turned into a 2 player strategy game. When we tested it out, we found that it was an easy way to understand districting and Gerrymandering without all the political baggage attached.
So we developed Berrymandering, a game where you gerrymander berries on a cake using the “I cut, you choose” approach. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we do, regardless of whether you prefer blueberries or strawberries.
We’re from Ohio!
Berrymandering was created by Elliot Aretskin-Hariton and Justin Gray. We live in Ohio, one of the most gerrymandered states. Eliot is an avid board gamer. In fact, this is the second board game he’s produced — check out Obelisk. We both have strong backgrounds in numerical optimization which let to a natural interest in “I cut, you choose” based approaches to districting.
Developing this game has been the perfect way for us to mix our skills, and we’re hopeful that it could make a small contribution to the fight against Gerrymandering. For us, this isn’t at all about seeing team strawberry or team blueberry win. Regardless of which berry you like best, without Gerrymandering politicians must actually answer to their voters and we are all better off.
Who did the artwork?
We were extremely lucky to work with such talented artists!
Joe Mauro did the artwork for this game.
The animation work for the instruction video was done by Samantha Reveley.