Gerrymandering: Election and Politicians

The gerrymandering process allows the majority party within a given state to maximize the number of seats it can win in the future elections. This leads it into creating as many districts as possible where it constitutes the majority. By doing this, those who support the minority parties are packed into the remaining few districts. This results in more electoral security for the minority party and less electoral security for the members of the minority parties. It also produces greater homogeneity within the districts while reducing competition for the house seats. Apart from the positive effects of gerrymandering, there are a number of negative effects associated with partisan gerrymandering. This process results in more competitive districts when compared to the non competitive districts and this in turn ambiguously affects polarization. Partisan gerrymandering also affects the state legislative electoral competitiveness as it has severe partisan biases. Excessive partisan gerrymandering is the violation of the equal protection clause since it consigns the

In order to combat gerrymandering, it is important to understand how and why a district is

The most quoted part of the declaration today is probably “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It is mostly used for black lives matter or any feminist “peaceful protests”. How is this connected to gerrymandering? Well, the entire point of gerrymandering is to have the opposing parties votes not count as much, in 2012 Republicans used gerrymandering very well. This would drive the Democrats crazy, yes their votes didn't count as much. Yes, that is unconstitutional, many may argue that some parts of gerrymandering are ok, but that is false. All votes should count the

During the course of the past few decades, the United States of America faced hundreds of issues that impact the nation’s view of leadership. Some people of the United States believe that the issues that face America involves those in office, while others believe that the issue is structural. In the case of America today, there is a momentous structural difficulty in our voting system. Furthermore, the most distinct problem that the United States handles today is gerrymandering. Throughout this essay, it will be made clear that gerrymandering is the leading problem facing America today because it harms the equality of citizens.

Yet, there are still cases that pop up every now and then. The Supreme Court has set up rules like compact and contiguous districts, physically adjoining districts, and the one-person, one-vote rule. That last one is most important because it affects everyone. Every person’s vote must equal the same. Even if district are redrawn to give more power to minorities, it is still giving an unfair because it lend strength towards the democratic party, to which minorities are more likely to vote. Gerrymandering is a threat to the weight that the average person’s vote carries and that is a threat to the fairness and unbiasedness of elections.

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.

In American politics today, many practices exist that greatly harm the American public. One of these dangerous practices, known as gerrymandering, occurs in nearly every state. While some claim that the practice helps America, in reality gerrymandering harms American democracy and safety. Gerrymandering greatly affects society, and must become illegal to insure fair representation, the democratic processes in America continues, and America continues to thrive.

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 addition, gerrymandering is an issue voters can't fix themselves. Since maps are already skewered toward the governing party it's difficult to vote them out of office, and while 24 states provide for some sort of ballot inetitave to help redistrict, many states have no option like that at all. The central problem with gerrymandering is that the governing party is able to create their own rules, which might be at least alliviated by requiring a non-partisan group to redistrict. Of course, it's near impossible to find a completely unbiased group of people, but a system like this would be infinitely better then our current laws allowing the majority to help themselves. The Supreme Court case will be able to look at evidence that the governing party used their postion to gain an advantage, as in the Wisconsin trial case where they had access to emails and documents to show how consultants for the legeslators used advanced statistics to provide an obvious benefit to Republicans.

In more basic and understandable words Gerrymandering is altering the size and shape of districts to have more

The Week Staff, authors of the article, “How to rig elections, the legal way”, use the article to explain what gerrymandering is and how it is used in the political system. According to the article, gerrymandering is a way for political parties to manipulate district lines to their advantage. This way, a specific party can gain more electoral votes in their favor. Many politicians use this technique, and it is perfectly legal for them to do it. However, just because gerrymandering is legal it does not mean it is fair. Many people are unaware of what gerrymandering is, and they do not understand what it does to the voting system. Gerrymandering is not fair to the voters, and redrawing districts should be given to people that are not partial

Voters should care about redistricting because it highly concerns them. The city that they are living in could become divided or family members could be in different districts. I believe that there is a problem with our current system on redistricting mainly because us people don’t have a say in it. I think if we got to see what our state legislators were wanting to do in the future, then we would be able to have a say in it. One of the main negative effects of political redistricting is gerrymandering. Being able to just change the districts to keep or change the political power is unfair. They can do this to just be able to win the vote in the end. One positive aspect is all the voters are fairly representative, meaning they all feel like their vote will count (unless gerrymandering is happening). On Ballotpedia on Indiana, we have 9 representatives and 150 state legislators and the state legislators do the redistricting. One reform that is going around the United States is the Electoral system and wanting to change it. I personally do not believe in changing the Electoral College because it’s something we have been using for over 200 years now, and it works. I also believe that the Electoral College is a fair way for elections to happen and it highly relies on our votes. Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is when voters rank the following election candidates in their favorable order and decide then who is their best pick. Winner take all is exactly what it means, the winner takes it all in the election. I do not think it is in the public interest for my state to use a commission or a board for redistricting because it comes down to what political party controls the board. For example, if you have a board of 10 people

2. In the past, courts have devised special standards for the different forms of gerrymandering. Many legal and political solutions have emerged to hinder gerrymandering, including court-ordered redistricting plans, redistricting commissions, and replacement voting systems that do not rely on drawing boundaries

A majority-minority constituency is a polling region, such as an America congressional area. The majority of the voters in the region are ethnic or racial subgroups. Whether a region is majority-minority is regularly determined by an America Census statistics. Majority-minority regions may be shaped to evade or tonic defilements of the Polling Privileges law of 1960's embargos on drawing bordering tactics that reduce the aptitude of an ethnic or linguistic minority to select its contenders of choice. In particular examples, majority-minority districts might effect from assenting ethnic gerrymandering. The importance of drawing region outlines to generate majority-minority districts is a material of dispute together internal and external of

Historically in America, voting has been a relatively discriminatory practice. It has limited and deprived many individuals of many diverse races, ethnicities, and walks of life from casting their votes to select the individual who they feel is most educated, and skilled to represent their interests. Not only has this been proven to be wrong by discriminating minority groups in voting, it also has proved to be a process, which minimizes the largest growing demographics in the country. Furthermore, with millennials growing to become more politically active, minority groups are becoming more politically involved than ever. Taking this into account an important question that is raised by the author William Eskridge in his book “Legislation and Statutory Interpretation” is “Would minorities be better off with more representatives who had to pay attention to their interests because they are a powerful and organized constituency, rather than with a few representatives of minority districts who specialize in protecting only their interests?” (Eskridge,Frickley,& Garrett, 2006, pp.55).