Final answer:
The first step in using a weather cracking tool is to collect detailed data on voter distributions and past election outcomes. Weather cracking, a form of gerrymandering, seeks to dilute the voting power of certain groups across districts. Understanding both weather cracking and packing is essential to comprehending the impacts of redistricting.
Step-by-step explanation:
Understanding weather cracking—a political tactic used in gerrymandering—is the first step towards using a weather cracking tool. In order to benefit a particular party or class, electoral constituency boundaries are manipulated, a practice known as gerrymandering. Similar to redistricting, weather cracking focuses on dispersing voters of a certain type—typically based on party affiliation—across multiple districts in order to reduce their influence.
When weather cracking is used, it is done so to keep a certain group from becoming the majority in one or more districts, thereby decreasing their overall power. However, "packing" is a different kind of gerrymandering in which voters of a particular kind are concentrated in one district in order to lessen their influence in other districts. Election results are manipulated using both tactics.