Gerrymandering: A Political Party

Forgette Richard, Garner Andrew, and Winkle John. “Do redistricting principles and practices affect US state legislative electoral competition? State Politics and policy quarterly, 20(9) (2009): 151 175.

More convincing than the fact that the majority of incumbents retained their seats by overwhelming margins is the shocking statistic that a quarter of the incumbents were uncontested.13 These politicians were so successful at arranging favorable districts that it was futile to even attempt a challenge. The author continued to examine particularly egregious cases of gerrymandering in New York, including that of Senator Guy Vellela, who once selected voters for his district by individual city blocks.14 Senator Guy Vellela, as well as the other state senators of New York, are prime examples of politicians exploiting gerrymandering to manipulate the outcome of elections and improve their outcomes.

There are two types of gerrymandering, the first is called packing. Packing is when you put the same type of people in one electoral district. Why is packing helpful?, well packing can decrease the chance of one party influencing the other party. Cracking is the other way of gerrymandering, this is when you spread one party out to decrease their impact on the district, causing the other party to win the district. Gerrymandering in general sounds a little wrong in a political view. It sounds very wrong after hearing about the great gerrymander in 2012. In the house of representatives we have 435 seats. To be able to determine how many seats go to a state every ten years the department of commerce holds something called a census. The

Politics in the United States is a complex structure that is comprised of many systems. While most of these systems appear to work well, there are a few that are broken. A perfect example of a broken system is the district boundaries and the likelihood of gerrymandering. Multiple states across the country are subjected to gerrymandering, which is the act of dividing a county into election districts that provide one political party with an unfair advantage over the other. Gerrymandering is used to help or prevent a particular demographic from gaining adequate representation. In Florida, for example, there is controversy over Congressional District 5, which extends from Jacksonville down to Orlando in a way that creates a “minority-majority” district.

When I thought of the topic Gerrymandering, I thought perhaps it would be too far-fetched when it came to the Rubric designed in a women studies class. But, on further review of the subject matter I realized how important this practice is to study, and how it can be used for both good and evil concepts in the political scheme of things.

Throughout the years, the United States has been choosing its president using the electoral college, voter ID laws to reduce voter turnout, gerrymandering to choose our representatives, and using methods to select candidates in the primaries. Through the electoral college, their presidents have been unfairly chosen using the winner take all system. In this system, if they, the voters, choose the losing party, they might as well go home because of how it works. To make matters even worse, voter ID laws have been making their laws even more difficult to surpass, in able to reduce the number of votes. Gerrymandering is used to give a party a special advantage by using the packing and cracking method, and as for the primaries, they are held by

In the “Redrawing the Electoral Map: Reforming The Electoral College With the District-Popular Plan,” Craig J. Herbst discusses the reformation of the Electoral College, using a different method for elections, and the U.S. Constitution. The author argues that District-Popular Plan method is better for the nation because if it is used candidates will have put more effort into developing strategies for the popular vote, and people would be more knowledgeable about politics with those developments. Herbst notes that District-Popular Plan can help groups of people who are disadvantaged and underrepresented. He also states that the only and the best way to do this to have a constitutional amendment which is so hard to pass. Ultimately, he concludes the article with explaining the benefits of having the District-Popular Plan. Craig J. Herbst’s article was published in Hofstra Law Review which is and academic and credible source because it is peer-reviewed by experts on the issue. The purpose of this source is to inform people about the Electoral College and the U.S Constitution, and an alternative way for the Electoral College. I will use this source to get more information

The article, “In Praise of Gerrymandering” written by Kevin D. Williamson, talks about gerrymandering, which is when politicians are cheating to be elected and shares his opinion that Republicans have become “too good” at this. He then illustrates that Democrats need to demonstrate better ways of obtaining votes.

In the 2016 election there was an increased amount of citizens that have realized that the current voting method we are using is unfair because not everyone’s vote is being counted due to them being minorities within the states that are already spoken for. However in the past, a couple of states have already done this and modified the method in a way that makes every vote count because equality is what our country stands for. By using the Congressional District Method instead of the current electoral college, it increases the chances we have in including everyone's vote. Many people are against changing the electoral college and believe that keeping it as it is is the best method we could use because they are afraid of change; however this

There was a economic depression 1890’s that changed political alignments and attitudes. A sudden interest in partisan politics was shown by White American male voters. Also, many Southern states were disenfranchising Black men. Democrats emphasized decentralized power located in the states. The Republicans however, favored a more active national government. Many voters generally stayed loyal pre-Civil War beliefs, this caused stalemating national government. It was because of this that Northern states went Republican and Southern states went Democratic. The majority of governmental action and reform occurred at the state and local

If I were to choose an improvement to make an American political institution better, I would choose to improve the process of redistricting. I would change redistricting in a way that would make it fairer such as getting someone who is not in either major party to draw the lines for new districts after every census instead of someone from the current party in power. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, (NCSL), redistricting is “the process of redrawing state legislative and congressional district boundaries every 10 years following the decennial United Census.”(Redistricting) Basically redistricting is the election of state legislators, Congress members, and many country and municipal offices who are grouped into districts

At a City Hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio when asked about the topic of mandatory voting laws (Jackson 2015), President Obama stated, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.” (Stephanopoulos 2015 p5) (Evidence: Testimony) He is right, if everyone voted the political map in the country would be completely different---and not for the better. Compulsory voting can potentially cause the nation 's true political viewpoints to be misrepresented, thus hindering political progression, by making voters feel obligated to choose candidates that may not represent their ideas and forcing the politically disengaged to select random ballots.

Redrawing the districts to give a political advantage is not sophisticated. It ruins the point of the Fifteenth Amendment which allows the right to vote no matter the race, sex, or personality. The right to vote doesn’t matter because of the unfairness and the corruption of the districts. These voters will be confused about these uncanny district shapes. Because of these lines, the citizens will not know which office to vote for. For Example, the first ever

Every year, in the beginning of November, Americans go out and exercise their right to vote for the people who they think will best represent their country, state and town. In the end not everyone running for an elected position will win, but the victor is the person who the majority wants to represent them as a population. This idea is what we call democracy and it is what the U.S. government is based on; or so we think. After each election, when all of the votes are counted, there are times where the voting margin between the winner and the loser is just too close for comfort. With the enormous population of our country and the sizable populations of our states, this only consistently happens within local government councils and boards. When this does happen, many people think, did the right person get elected? This discomfort is something we cannot change because the results are what they are. However, what if this wasn’t the case? What if there was a way we could ensure that the victor of a close election was the right person for the majority? Today I present to you a policy that will fix this problem that touches every American across our nation. This policy is called the 5% revote policy and states that all local governments will have a revote for town or city council members if the vote margin percentage between the victor and the runner-up is 5% votes or less. I will now show you that this problem exists and why it exists, a real example of this problem and what you

The greatest benefit is clearly the fair representation of “We the People”. Currently district lines within states are bias, creating an ineffective voting system where a winner takes all system displays unequal representation for minorities. Creating a structure where every vote counts, allows for shared voice that fundamentally will change the portrait of our electoral officials. The end benefit has the possibility to transform the House of Representative and the Senate’s polarization and partisanship, into an entity that might effectively “get the job done”.