The Detrimental Practice of Gerrymandering

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.

Throughout the years many Americans have faced what is known as voter suppression. When researching voter suppression you will find that it is defined as a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing those with voting rights from voting. I interpret that the causes of voter suppression derives from that of equality issues or a misconception of government. However, history recorded the effects of voter suppression which leads to major violence, rebellion, strikes, or in some cases fear. The jarring act of voter suppression began early as 1776 when white men owning property were allowed to vote denying Jews, Catholics, and others their voting rights.

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.

In the following essay I will be talking about the disadvantages and advantages of partisan elections for state politics. I will also examine the last couple year's election results and costs. Finally, I will discuss if partisanship made a difference in the vote, as well as if a judge should be decided by partisan vote. In the next couple paragraphs I will talk more specifically about these topics.

In conclusion, gerrymandering is harmful towards the free elections outlined in the constitution. Gerrymandering is built on tactics like cracking, packing, and dilutes the strength of a single vote. Overall, gerrymandering is selfish, and profits only those setting the rules. Only those in power will remain in power during elections ruining them for opposing or minority parties and everyone

Gerrymandering is a form of boundary redistricting, in which the boundaries of an electoral district or constituency are modified for electoral purposes, often producing a contorted or unusual shape. The resulting district is known as a Gerrymander. Gerrymandering is used as a potential way to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or may be used to

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.

Gerrymandering is a brilliant but unjust technique. Elections like one in 2012 show us how their is corruption in the system. A party should not be able to win control of congress if the opposing party received more votes. In 2012 the Republicans gained control of the House although the Democrats received over a million more votes.

With districts drawn to favor one party the same party will win more seats in the House giving them the upper

The United States government is commonly referred to as a “Duopoly”, which means that there are two established political parties, Democratic and Republic, and that these two parties share the vast majority of the political power in the country. This is because the United States follows a winner-takes-all voting system, utilizing a “single-member district plurality”. The “single-member district” portion means that for each geographic area or district, there is only one elected official, and the “plurality” portion means that in United States elections, the representative or politician who receives the most number of votes, wins the given election, even if it’s less than half the percentage of votes. According to Duverger’s law, a Political Science principle, plurality voting procedures correlationally support the emergence of only two political parties, in contrast to a multiparty democracy.

Despite the clear dislike for nonpartisan elections by parties Nebraska managed to pass a term limit in 2000 to offset unicameral elections. This only increased partisanship drastically due to parties playing a direct role in candidate recruitment and increasing party coalitions (p. 76). Parties were now more involved in recruiting candidates that had the same ideologies and interest as them. In essence, the concept of having unicameral

Having state-level republican or democrat legislators draw their own maps is a bad practise. This is because the main goal of redistricting is to help a community secure meaningful representations. In this process this could be unfair but only occurs every decade. The matter of it is that the sun belt will continue to gain more representatives and the other states will lose representatives. But win or lose, states have to re-draw their lines to make sure that the districts have equal populations and that there in one continuous shape. If there is an unfair advantage, and the elections are not competitive and are basically over before they start, then it will appear that the democracy is going to be made fun of. But adopting non-partisan redistricting

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