Decade Redistricting Prohibition Act

A congressional district is an electoral division of a state, electing and entitled to send one member to the United State House of Representatives. Districting is the initial set district, whereas redistricting is the process of drawing district boundaries after the decennial census and new population changes. Redistricting is a political process that affects the fortunes of incumbent House members, state legislators,

There have been many amendments that have made their way through the congress since first the constitution was instated. A few, however, never made it into the United States constitution. There were six amendments that were never ratified into the constitution. Some were justified in their reasons for not being ratified, but then there are some which to this day no one quite understands why they were not ratified into the constitution. In Americans attempt to be a fair and just country, its government made many different decisions that were later written into a simple document that would have such an impact on a nation and even the world. The six amendments that did not make the cut were either later rewritten or forgotten completely but here in this paper all six will be looked at and analyzed. The six amendments are Congressional Apportionment Amendment, Title of Nobility Amendment, Corwin Amendment, Child Labor Amendment, Equal Rights Amendment, and District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment.

The topic of race, redistricting, and minority representation in Congress has emerged as one of the most salient issues in contemporary political thought. The creation of so‑called majority minority districts has been attacked as unfair and racially polarizing by some observers and ultimately struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The study of race in relation to American politics and institutions, and, in particular, to the institution of Congress, has produced a wealth of research and literature in recent years. This scope of budding research ranges from legislative activity and Congressional voting to the electoral process and campaigning. This study examines the effects of

Christopher Garza Professor Sharifian GOVT 2306-71003 September 30, 2017 Appeals to Apathy: Legislation in Texas Running for public office in the state of Texas is not an easy task. The state is rife with gerrymandering, special interest groups, and a generally apathetic voting populace. To challenge an incumbent means to battle against all of that. The population of Texas that does vote is most likely to vote for the same person that they have been voting for. Special Interest groups will fund their campaigns, giving them a greater platform to reach voters than one would have as an individual. Gerrymandering allows an incumbent to draw their district in a way that maximizes their voting base while minimizing their opposition. For

In 1865, nearly ninety years after the founding of the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, thereby abolishing the “peculiar institution” which had once threatened to end the Great Experiment of American Democracy. Two subsequent amendments, ratified in 1868 and 1870, guaranteed equal protection of the law to all citizens and prohibited the denial of voting rights on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Yet, close to one hundred years after these three Reconstruction Amendments became the law of the land, racial equality was still something confined to the dreams of visionaries and activists. Writing a letter from Birmingham Jail in Alabama, civil rights leader Martin Luther King

Houston is a large city with very unique qualities that most cities cannot even begin to understand, but is this just Houstonian pride talking? No, actually one of the unique qualities that Houston has is how we handle our land use planning. Houston is well known for not having any zoning ordinances, which has become a well-known topic for a while now. People argue weather our lack of zoning is chaotic, unorthodox, or independent and distinct. Another unique quality that we have is where our political culture stands. Dr. Elazar’s “Individualistic - Traditionalistic” study of political culture talks about three categories moralistic,

The 2003 redistricting exertion was amazingly disputable chiefly in view of the considerable number of individuals included in the redistricting. When they overcame with all the exceptional meeting and everybody consented to the term Texas was improved. To help all that attempt to keep running in the race. In 2011 the redistricting Texas increased four seats in the House of Representatives. Redistricting engages control of our races by allowing inhabitant administrators to offer partitioned some help with partnering, hurt political enemies and pick their voters before the voters pick them. A conclusive target of redistricting like most distinctive thoughts in American administrative issues is to keep everything sensible. In that it is to redraw

As History.com puts it, aside from the events that led to the passing of “the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Right Act was one of the most expansive pieces of civils rights legislation in American history ”. We live in a society where discrimination against people of color is still common and widespread. However, because of all the hard work and pain that previous generations of freedom fighters went through, we have the ability to eat together, sit together, become educated together, and most importantly, equally share our legal rights as American citizens. Selma, among other milestones, was a march that changed

Chapter 8 topics varies from voter’s perspectives, constitutional amendments, and candidate’s perspectives. This election has raised many concerns for voters who are deciding whether to vote or to not vote. Voting is a privilege just like driving, but everyone is not able to partake in this privilege due to law barriers. I learned that the fifteenth amendment outlawed race-based restriction on voting. Later the twenty-fourth amendment which passed in 1964 forbided the use of poll taxes in federal elections. This has also been applied to state election since the court passed this in 1966.

On the other hand, section 4 of the act highlights the need to adopt special coverage formulas to integrate the minority groups in the entire electoral process. In many instances, the act requires that such special coverage formulas to be cleared by the federal agencies before they can be applied. The fundamental goal of the preclearance provision is to prevent discrimination against certain groups of voters who may be deemed to antagonize the general position of their local political trends. However, this provision has since been deemed unconstitutional in the Shelby County v. Holder Case of 2013 (Fuller, 2014). Despite the perceived unconstitutionality of the two sections of the act, and the attempts to review the act to eliminate the clauses, analyses of the political dynamics indicate that the two sections are still relevant in American politics.

Nearly a century after the Confederacy’s guns fell silent, the racial legacies of slavery and Reconstruction continued to reverberate loudly throughout Alabama in 1965. Even the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 months earlier had done little in some parts of the state to ensure African Americans of the basic right to vote. Perhaps no place was Jim Crow’s grip tighter than in Dallas County, where African Americans made up more than half of the population, yet accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters.

The voting acts right was signed and passed by our former United States President, Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. The purpose of the act was to dispose of the discrimination that was being released mostly in the southern states after the civil war. The congress sought to ensure that all United States citizens were assured that the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment were actually being used. There are two sections in the act that I am going to describe briefly. They are the fifth and fourth section of the act that have the purpose of keeping all civil rights guaranteed to all citizens.

The Supreme Court of the United States has produced many infamous cases in its existence as a part of the three branches of government. It has seen many cases pertaining in particular to the Voting Rights Act initially enacted in 1965. There are two sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that are of particular concern in most cases, sections 4 and 5. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain states, districts, and localities to obtain federal preclearance before making any changes or alterations to their election laws or practices (Overby). Section 4 specifies a formula for determining whether a geographical area is subject to section 5 (Overby). When the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965 it was originally restricted to five years. However, since then there have been multiple extensions. Congress extended it for the first time in 1970 for another five years, followed by another extension in 1975 for seven more years, and for another twenty-five years in 1982 (The Oyez Project). When the twenty-five year reauthorization came to expire in 2006, Congress yet again extended the 1965 Voting Rights Act for another twenty-five years (The Oyez Project). Since its passing and continuous reauthorizations, there have been many attempts to declare the Voting Rights Act, specifically sections 4 and 5 unconstitutional. A distinct case that warrants a closer look is the case of Shelby County v. Holder.

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court made its final decision on the Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, deeming Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965 and extended several times, unconstitutional. Section 5, although not being struck down, became insignificant without its triggering formula, Section 4, to determine the coverage. This Supreme Court decision took away the key parts of the Voting Rights Act, which was an important method for the federal government to oversee and enforce the enfranchisement of African-Americans in some states. While justifying their decision, the Court mentioned that Section 4 only applied to specific states and it was against the idea of equal sovereignty of all states in the Constitution. What is more, the Congress’ justification of these unequal actions towards those states in 2006, was based on 40-year old data showing that it was still an exceptional condition, which cannot reflect the current situations and needs of the country.

Shelby County v. Holder is a hugely important in the United States Supreme Court case related to the (whether or not something agrees with the Constitution) of to legal rules of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which demands certain states and local governments to get federal preclearance before putting into use of any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4,which contains the coverage formula that decides which legal controls are subjected to preclearance based on their histories of(unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) in voting.I disagree with the decision because The big pattern of (unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) that led the Court to before that judge as corrected in Section 5 of the Voting Rights