Narrative Writing Assignments Of Pretentious Middle School Students

The first proposal, of changing the electoral system for the House of Representatives, would mean that each state is represented in proportion to its population. This entails that states with higher populations will receive more votes because they have more seats in the House. Less populous states may argue against this reform because they will have a disadvantage when it comes to voting on legislation. However, the reform also includes having each state serve as electoral districts. In this case, multi-member districts will be needed—proportional representation will require a larger district magnitude. Having these territorial subdivisions will help create an efficient legislative system because there would be less possibility of manipulating the votes—not as relevant to election results when seats are proportional. Having the votes distributed in this manner may help avoid a deadlock and therefore, allow for a faster process when passing legislation. In addition, minorities will have chance to be represented by possibly gaining a seat in a particular district—a highly populous

In contrast, hyperpluralism is a theory that explains politics in a more relatable way. No one governs instead power is “thinly scattered”. Lawrence states how “the exercise of political power has become a highly competitive tug-of-war between institutions, policymakers, political parties, numerous interest groups, and voters” (14). There are ample amounts of evidence in California politics. There are several components that contribute to this evidence such as individualism in political life, growing diversity of group interests, and a change in the “nature of majoritarian

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

Without a certain degree of control over the governmental levels of power, blacks end up disproportionately dependent on white-created legislation and white administration of those laws (Pohlmann, 219). The potential dangers of gerrymandering involves the distribution of blacks into districts where they are diluted into a minority or the creation of districts where blacks are an excessive majority so that an overall district majority white can be achieved (Thornburgh v. Gingles, 31). These redistricting plans severely hindered blacks ability to vote for a representative of their choice (1). However, in order to stem the progress of racially discriminating gerrymandering, these districts are examined based on the impact and district composition

Riker argues that these bold uses of gerrymandering are made possible, and even encouraged, by two landmark Supreme Court Cases. Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims were two similar cases from the 1960’s that addressed the unequal representation caused by the unwillingness of politicians to adjust the electoral districts to accurately reflect the major population changes of the twentieth century.15 Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims forced Congress and state legislative bodies to correct this inaccurate political representation by mandating equally sized voting districts.16 In fact, Reynolds v. Sims went so far as to require a voting population difference of no more than ten percent between the largest and smallest electoral districts.17 Furthermore,

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.

“The Republicans are going to have their hand on the computer mouse, and when you have your hand on the computer mouse, you can change a district from a D to an R.” - The New York Times Dec 24,2010. Redistricting plays a role in electing representatives and state legislators. There is this thing called gerrymandering that allows the drawing of the new districts to be in their favor.

By placing high percentages of members of a racial or ethnic minority group in one or more districts so that minority voting strength is artificially limited to those districts and is minimized in neighboring districts. This leads to Racially Polarized Voting, which creates circumstances in which the voting preferences of a racial or ethnic group consistently vary from those of other racial or ethnic groups, particularly when the different voting r=preferences are based on the race of the candidate this also is referred as Racial Bloc Voting. Undercount is a common practice in the error in census data that results from the failure to count some people in the census, which is done every ten years. This proves problematic as certain groups, such as members of racial or ethnic minorities, have been disproportionately undercounted by the Federal Census, either by voter registration ineffectiveness or the migratory nature of the poor in attempt to find work. Congressman John S. Tanner has proposed a bill which would limit the drawing of congressional boundaries to once per decennial census period, and require the approval of a new district boundary by an independent commission.

"Redrawing the Electoral Map: Reforming the Electoral College with the District-Popular Plan." Hofstra Law Review, vol. 41, no. 1, Fall2012, pp. 217-265. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ofm&AN=86414706&site=ehost-live.

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.

Before comparing the incumbency advantage, the differences between Newark and Washington’s 7th congressional district have to be examined. While the incumbency advantage is very similar in each region, the physical and demographical difference couldn’t be starker. First, and most obviously, Sharpe James was running for mayoral position of Newark but Jim McDermott was running for the United States House of

For example in Chicago’s fourth district where a grassy strip of land is stuck between two expressways which connect the top and bottom halves of a district is designed to keep a Hispanic in Congress. This congressional line protects Chicago’s Hispanic representation in Congress but it also ensures a safe Democrat seat for Democrat representative Luis Vicente Gutierrez who has now served since 1993. In 2014 this form of gerrymandering known as “Packing” was so widespread that it was thought just 51 of 435 House Representatives seats were actually competitive. Incumbency rates are over 80 % in the senate and over 90% in the House on average. However these figures dropped to 67% in 2010 but this is still considerably high showing incumbents do have an

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).

This essay determine how 100 congressional seats should be divided among the 10 states of the union. The number of seats in a state should (in any fair distribution) be proportional to its ratio in the population. Therefore rounding according to some (acceptable) rule should be applied.