"Gerrymandering" is a phrase which refers to a practice, unlawful in the United States, where state legislators draw the lines of congressional districts to favor the political parties they support.
Gerrymandering is widely considered harmful for many reasons. It allows legislators to manipulate the voting communities which support them - effectively picking which people get to vote for them - and it can also, often, unfairly misrepresent actual voting patterns and the desires of the people.
Unfortunately, laws against gerrymandering are difficult to effectively enforce.
The images and descriptions in this image gallery provide a simple explanation of gerrymandering, how it happens, why it's bad, and why it isn't easy to stop:
A University of Illinois professor is currently developing a way to end gerrymandering with the use of a supercomputer - specifically, the "Blue Waters supercomputer," the fastest computer used for research anywhere.
This video explains what exactly they're trying to develop.
In the words of Professor Wendy Tam Cho,
"These elections are not competitive.
So, we created a computational tool that automates the re-districting process. It allows you to take humans out of the process. It allows you to create maps in any way that you want to specify. ... When you're using a computer, you can basically turn partisanship off."
So, based on this information, it sounds like the answer to the question "could supercomputers eventually eliminate gerrymandering?" is: YES.
But will we actually use them?