Why Move the Lines When You Can Just Move People?

Jon Grinspan: “The 2026 election cycle has seen heated redistricting battles — fought through legislatures, referendums and courts — as both parties vie to craft favorable election maps. But what if American history contained another way for politicians to pick their voters? A way so audacious that it hasn’t really been tried for a century, a weapon blunter than gerrymandering, a move so blatant that it calls into question the meaning of representative democracy itself?”

“What if, instead of moving the map to fit the voters, politicians moved voters to fit the map?”

“Party bosses worked this scheme throughout the 19th century: rounding up drifters and drunkards, registering them at flophouses in swing districts and herding them to the polls on Election Day. Cunning politicos realized that by relocating just a few thousand voters, they could sway races, elect presidents, shape a nation of millions. Americans called it colonization — a fitting name in an era when political machines settled empires not overseas but in Manhattan or Sheboygan, Wisc.”