Classroom · Politics & civics
Same voters. Who draws the lines?
One town elects five councillors. Students draw districts for a fictional party, following the same rules on their phones. When drawing closes, compare the seats their maps produced and ask what makes a map fair.
- Up to 600 people
A practice run with fictional students. No real classroom or join code is created.
Try an answer on the phone. Lead the lesson from the screen.
On their phone
You are presenting
Setting up the room…
Lesson deck
Teach it as a ready-made lesson
Hook, how it works, the live activity and takeaways. Edit anything.
Draw the districts
A ready-to-teach lesson deck: a hook, how it works, the live activity and takeaways for the debrief.
6 slides · 1 activity
What it teaches
Explain how district boundaries can change which party wins seats while the households and their votes stay fixed. Distinguish a map that follows the rules from a typical map, and a typical map from a fair one.
- Gerrymandering
- Electoral representation
Debrief, while the boards are still up
- 01
How wide was the room’s range of seat counts? If every map gave the same result, what would you try changing?
- 02
Which districts were won by a narrow majority, and which contained more votes than their winner needed?
- 03
What rule would you use to judge fairness? Would someone drawing for the other party accept it?
- 04
What does comparison with all maps that follow these rules tell you? What does it leave out?
- 05
Who should draw the lines, and what information should they be allowed to use?
How it works
- 01
Add it to your library
Sign up free and pull the activity from Decka's built-in classroom catalog — one click copies it into your own library, ready to run from Decka or inside PowerPoint.
- 02
Students join by QR
Everyone scans from the projector and plays in their phone's browser. No app, no account, nothing to install.
- 03
You run the room
You move the activity phase by phase: collection closes, the boards resolve on the big screen, and the debrief happens while the results are still up.
Explore gerrymandering by drawing the map
Gerrymandering means drawing electoral boundaries to favour a group. This lesson uses a fictional town so the class can examine the boundary choices directly: the households stay put, while the districts change.
In the default town, 25 households elect five councillors. Each district must contain five households joined side to side, and three votes win its seat. The phone checks the map against those rules. A valid map can still produce a different result from another valid map of the same town.
After drawing closes, the projector compares the accepted maps by seats won. The class investigates the results it actually produced; different majorities or a wide spread are possible, never guaranteed.
An exact reference counts every division of this fixed town that follows the same size and connection rules, counting each division once regardless of district names. Use that comparison to ask whether a result is common or unusual. Rarity alone does not establish fairness, and the town’s two rules do not represent every constraint used in real elections.
FAQ
Gerrymandering game questions, answered
What makes a valid map in this activity?
For the default town, all 25 households must belong to one of five districts. Each district contains five households connected side to side. The phone identifies incomplete or disconnected districts before a map can be handed in.
Do the households move or change their votes?
No. Every map uses the same fictional households in the same places. Students change the district boundaries.
Is an unusual map necessarily unfair?
No. The reference shows how often a seat result occurs among maps following the activity’s rules. Deciding what is fair needs a stated criterion; that is part of the discussion.
Are individual maps named on the projector?
After the first drawing closes, the projector shows up to two accepted room maps: those giving Hill the most and fewest seats. If the results tie, it shows one map; with no submissions, it shows none. Mapmakers are not named, but students may recognize a map.
Can I try drawing a map on my own?
Use the free district drawer to try the fixed example town. Its map stays in that browser session; starting a class gives students a fresh activity.
How long does it take?
Allow time for two rounds of drawing and discussion of the results. You can close each drawing round when the class is ready; the lesson also gives each round a time limit.
Do students need an app or an account?
No. Students scan a QR code from the projector (or open a link) and play in their phone's browser. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
Does it work in PowerPoint or Google Slides?
In PowerPoint, yes: open the Decka add-in on a slide and choose the Classroom tile. Google Slides is not supported yet; there you present from Decka itself. Students play from their phones either way.
How many students can play at once?
Up to 50 participants per live activity on the free plan, 150 on Pro, and 300 on Badass.
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