Stephen Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington says that while this kind of gerrymandering may help black voters elect black lawmakers, “it won’t give those African-American elected officials the opportunity to have all that much influence … when we go to Richmond, you see that the Democrats are entirely in the minority.”
Farnsworth says that when lawmakers get the opportunity to draw lines that benefit themselves, they will do so.
“It is nothing more out of the ordinary for human nature than if we had students grade their own SAT exams,” he says.
