1. This question refers to the passage and the map.
The job of drawing congressional districts falls to state legislatures. Although legislators must draw district lines so that all districts have approximately equal populations, they sometimes draw lines to favor one party over another - a process called gerrymandering. The term is named for Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, whose administration redrew senatorial district lines in 1812 to favor the Democratic-Republicans. One of the districts was so oddly shaped that it resembled a salamander, giving rise to the term gerrymander.
Gerrymandering is common, but it has been challenged in the courts. In the 1980s the Indiana Democratic Party disputed the state's newly drawn congressional districts, arguing that the Republican legislature drew the lines to disenfranchise the Democrats. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that political gerrymandering in this case was not unconstitutional because it did not violate the "one person, one vote" principle.
In addition to benefiting political parties, gerrymandering has been used to increase or decrease the voting power of particular racial or ethnic groups. During the late 1950s a group of African Americans in Alabama charged that their district had been redrawn from a square to a 28-sided figure in order to take away their votes. The Supreme Court found in their favor in 1960. Drawing districts to increase the power of a minority group has also been declared unconstitutional. In the 1993 case, Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court declared that unusually shaped districts drawn to benefit minority groups violated the Constitution. The Court has held, however, that irregularly shaped districts are constitutional as long as racial considerations do not play a predominant role in the drawing of the district.
Which sentence is the best summary of the passage?
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