We live in a time in which deciding what is the biggest threat to our country's democracy is difficult. Is it Russia meddling in our elections? Is it voter suppression? Is it oligarchy taking over the government?

The answer is all of the above, but arguably the most important one is the root cause of government corruption: gerrymandering.

Imagine a state that has two political parties. 50 percent of the voters support one party, and 50 percent support the other. Therefore, the state legislatures should have roughly equal representations of both parties, right? But one of the parties has managed to control 75 percent of the state's legislature. How? It probably derives from gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering occurs when congressional districts' boundaries are manipulated by the party in control in order to steal majorities in a legislature. Many states have gerrymandered maps, but the one in the news most recently is that of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The state's supreme court voted 5-2 that the congressional districts drawn in 2011 were lopsided and strategically drawn to benefit Republicans. Of Pennsylvania's 18 seats in the House of Representatives, 12 are held by Republicans. Republicans held 13 before representative-elect Conor Lamb's victory in a recent special election.

If 12 seats are held by Republicans, that means 67% of the state is Republican, right? Not exactly. In the 2016 election, 2.97 million people in Pennsylvania voted for Donald Trump, and 2.92 million voted for Hillary Clinton. Trump won the state by less than 1 percent.

Pennsylvania's supreme court ordered its congressional districts be redrawn. The new map, shown in the cover photo above, demonstrates a much cleaner congressional map compared to the map on the left, the gerrymandered one.

Gerrymandering sometimes centers around race. In 2017, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling saying that North Carolina's congressional maps targeted black people with surgical precision.

The 12th district in North Carolina cut through the middle of the state in the Charlotte area. The district was drawn so that it would cut connect predominantly black communities without including any white votes. This form of gerrymandering groups like-minded voters together in one district to take away votes in the districts they were in before.

Gerrymandering is not exclusive to the Republican Party even though that's how it has seemed lately. In most states, the party in control of the legislature will get to draw new legislative districts when the time comes.

States should let bipartisan or independent commissions draw congressional maps in order to prevent manipulation by one party.

Voters should choose their representatives, but when gerrymandering occurs, representatives choose their voters. That is not a part of democracy.

If every state in our union were free of gerrymandering, Americans would have more faith in their government since both parties would have to abide by fair rules.