I mean… People live in regions. Those regions have representatives. How are those regions defined? Maps. Nothing uniquely American about it as far as I can tell.
The unique thing is that, depending on the layout, votes matter differently. I don’t know of any other democratic country that makes it possible to change election results by changing districts.
Yes, we bastardize the districts, but when the upstream comment said “Election maps seems wild to me” (not any map in particular, just the idea of a map) I brought up my point.