packing

Packing is a form of gerrymandering that consists of drawing district boundaries to “pack” a particular community into a small number of highly consolidated electoral districts to limit the effectiveness of their voting power. For example, a minority community may be condensed to one district in order to limit their voting power instead of being equitably spread amongst several districts.

Compare with cracking.

[Last reviewed in May of 2026 by the Wex Definitions Team]

Keywords

• minority vote dilution
• redistricting
• VOTING RIGHTS

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