Arnold Schwarzenegger has accused US politicians of attempting to "out-cheat" one another as next year's mid-term elections close in.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, the 78-year-old movie star railed against a gerrymandering arms race currently playing out between states.
"This is spreading like wildfire all over the country," he said.
Here is a quick breakdown of what is going on.
First, what is gerrymandering?
It is a tactic political parties use to gain an advantage at elections.
Federal electorates in the US (known as congressional districts) are decided by each individual state, and not necessarily by an independent commission.
Because of that, politicians in many states can redraw federal electorates — a practice called "redistricting" — to include more voters in favour of their party.
While many consider gerrymandering to be a form of cheating or rigging elections, it is entirely legal to do, unless a state has passed laws against the practice within its own borders.
Why is the US talking about gerrymandering now?
The US is set to hold its mid-term elections, where the makeup of the House of Representatives in Congress is decided, in November 2026.
As a rule of thumb, the party that the sitting president belongs to usually loses House seats at midterm elections.
To insulate against this, US President Donald Trump directed Republican governors to go about gerrymandering congressional maps in July.
Texas politicians put forward a map that would likely secure Republicans an extra five seats at the election next year.
California decided to hit back by proposing a law called Proposition 50 that would allow politicians to bypass its own anti-gerrymandering laws and redraw its congressional map to favour Democrats.
The state will vote on Proposition 50 at a special election in November 4.
Soon after, politicians in other states began considering their options to draw up maps that would preference their parties.
[LINK: States considering gerrymanders]What did Schwarzenegger say?
Mr Schwarzenegger slammed both Democrats and Republicans for their gerrymandering tactics.
"There's this war going on all over the United States of who can out-cheat the other," he told CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
"Texas started it, they did something terribly wrong, and then all of a sudden, California says, 'We have to do something terribly wrong', and then now other states are jumping in.
"Now this is spreading like wildfire all over the country."
Mr Schwarzenegger says rather than gerrymandering to win elections, the political parties should aim to outperform their opponents.
He is pushing for a federal independent commission that would oversee the drawing up of unbiased district maps for all states.
"It saddens me that we are going in the opposite direction," he said.
"The ones that are getting left behind are the people."
How biased are current congressional maps?
Despite noting that Texas "started" the current wave of gerrymandering, Mr Schwarzenegger did not place blame solely on Republicans.
"There is extreme gerrymandering going on that in a state like Massachusetts, [where] 40 per cent of the people [are] voting for Trump, but they have zero representatives," he said.
"In New Mexico, 45 per cent of the people voted for Trump and vote Republican, [but] zero [representatives are] sent to the House.
"There's crazy gerrymandering going on all over the country."
While comparing presidential election results and the number of House representatives for each party can give a basic overview of how severe gerrymandering is in a given state, getting a truly accurate reading can be complicated.
Princeton's Gerrymandering Project uses several mathematic equations to assess how unfair each state's congressional map is.
While it agrees that New Mexico preferences Democrats, it says Massachusetts' map does not provide either party a political advantage.
[LINK: Congressional report card]Why was CNN talking to Schwarzenegger about it?
If you know Mr Schwarzenegger as a movie star or bodybuilder, he might not seem an obvious choice for a chat about politics.
He even gave the interview from inside Venice Beach's iconic Gold's Gym, emphasising that background.
But Mr Schwarzenegger also served as the governor of California for just over seven years.
That was from November 2003 to January 2011.
He ran as part of the Republican Party but was considered more of a centrist than a conservative. Connie Bruck, a journalist for the New Yorker, described him as a "supermoderate" in 2004 for his policies and bipartisan approach to politics.
He has long argued that gerrymandering is a disservice to American voters.
While governor, Mr Schwarzenegger was a vocal advocate for fairer maps and played a significant role in the introduction of an independent redistricting commission in California.
If Proposition 50 passes into law, politicians will be allowed to bypass the California Citizens Redistricting Commission for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.
