Mapmaker, A Board Game About Gerrymandering And How Terrible It Is

Mapmaker, A Board Game About Gerrymandering And How Terrible It Is

Gerrymandering — “a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries” — is a problem in a lot of places, but few are as badly affected as the USA. So a group of young Texans decided to make a board game about it to highlight the issue.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the sibling designers — 23-year-old twins Louis and Rebecca Lafair and their 17-year-old brother Josh — “wanted to start a conversation about a topic that isn’t discussed enough”, and were inspired to create the game because they live in Texas’ 10th congressional district, one of the most gerrymandered in the state.

The game, called Mapmaker, looks a little like Ticket to Ride, with each player trying to construct lines around the voting heartlands to maximise (or minimise) their influence in an election.

Mapmaker is up on Kickstarter now.

And while this game is a bit of light-hearted fun, the Lafairs are aware the issue itself is serious business, and so will be sending copies to “Supreme Court justices, state legislators and other politicians”.


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