The Pros And Cons Of Gerrymandered States

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

The Untied States of America is a country built on freedom, and the writers of the constitution made sure that this was guaranteed to all U.S citizens in our constitution. After the colonial Army won the Revolutionary war, a constitution called the Articles of Confederation was put into place, but it had many problems within it. Because of these problems a constitutional convention was called in 1787 to revise these articles, but instead an entirely new constitution was written. At the constitutional convention, a group called the anti-federalists opposed the constitution because they wanted to keep state sovereignty and limit the federal government. Another group called the federalists wanted to ratify the constitution because they believed that a stronger federal government was necessary for the new nation. Although some may say that the new constitution did not protect against tyranny, through a system of federalism, separation of powers and checks and balances the United States constitution prevented any form of tyranny.

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 redistribution of districts definitely helped voters that felt underrepresented especially those in rurals and cities but this still presents problems with small pockets of voters that are either undecided or strongly in favor of one party over their districts affiliation. The new NY District 23 is a perfect example of this. District 23 is lead by Congressman Tom Reed, a Republican representing a very rural area of Southern Tier New York. The cities of Corning, Ithaca, Olean, Jamestown, and Dunkirk are scattered throughout the district with dozens of public and private universities also present. The district population is mostly isolated in the cities with sparse populations elsewhere. A majority of the population would be young, due to the universities, and mostly urban, because of the cities, so you expect the district to be blue, wrong. District 23 is in fact red, because of the lack of mobilization of young voters to go out and vote. Because of this, older more rural voters decide the party affiliation of the district resulting in representation by Reed. Some argue that Tom Reed’s district is gerrymandered in his favor which resulted in his reelection this past November. Although he was reelected, there was still a presence of more younger voters making an effort to go out and vote. John Plumb, Reed’s Democratic opponent, had great outreach in the Chautauqua

It is defined as a system where two major political parties dominate voting at nearly all elections that take place and the elected members form part of either party. The two major Parties in America are the Democrats and Republicans. The arrangement is such that all the parties who are elected form part of wither parties and it is very rare that a third party win any seat in the legislature. There are three types of third parties. These are the single issue, the candidate driven and the ideological. The single issue is made up of the peace and freedom and the independent party. The candidate driven is built up of the reform, Bull Moose and the green. The libertarian and socialist form part of the ideological party.

1. Gerrymandering helps one party get more seats in legislature rather than gaining more votes. It helps parties because the reps can have congress draw out a section of a district that are certain to vote for them to have more votes. Also Democratic and Republican won 29 seats. Then the next year the law was repealed the next year. That is the reason why gerrymandering is gets more seat in legislature and not more votes.

Gerrymandering in the United States Gerrymandering is a political technique where the majority party in a district or state, set up the boundaries of each district for state and federal governing houses to benefit them. In the United States, districts in each state are redrawn when the census is taken, but the redrawing is voted on by the members of the government in each state, so often the majority party sets up each district boundaries to favor incumbent candidates or their own party. Both major parties in the U.S. contribute to gerrymandering, but the GOP has been proven to more actively engage in the practice, mostly to disenfranchise minority voters, who often align with the Democratic party. Ocasionally, parties will collude with the

In 1842, Congress passed the Apportionment Act, which required congressional districts to be compact and equal in population (“Apportionment Legislation 1840 - 1880”). Although the law made an initial effort to curb gerrymandering, it failed to adequately define “compact.” Over a century later, in the 1962 court case Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts must have reasonable boundaries. The court further deemed redistricting issues to be justiciable, enabling federal courts to decide gerrymandering cases (“Baker v. Carr”). It wasn’t until the 1985 Davis v. Bandemer case that the Supreme Court ruled that manipulating district boundaries for political gains is unconstitutional (“Davis v. Bandemer”). However, the Supreme Court left unanswered one pivotal question: What are the standards for identifying and litigating a gerrymander? (Hess, 209). Although it is illegal, without a clear national standard for addressing gerrymandering, state legislatures get away with it in federal courts by exploiting the legal ambiguity surrounding the practice. Therefore, taking the power to redistrict away from state legislatures in the first place is the most viable

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

If you care about your say or the people’s say when voting for your country’s leaders, then you should know that gerrymandering is an unfavorable and atrocious way that many politicians have attempted to deceive the voting system. Gerrymandering violates the US Constitution that our founding fathers worked so hard to create. It is a very inequitable thing to undertake. Therefore, I am 100% against the idea of gerrymandering as it gives many parties an unjustified dominance in many states when voting electorally. Additionally, this issue also violates the United State citizens’ individual rights, and infringes on two of the seven constitutional principles.

The process of Gerrymandering is a very controversial and corrupt, which is outlined throughout the piece “How to Rig an Election” and “Scrambling the Lines: Redistricting Gone Awry”. Throughout the second article, the author discusses how the GOP is willing to break every rule stated to increase its electoral power and have a better shot at winning. Furthermore, the GOP used Gerrymandering to alter seven democratic districts in Texas to allow them to lean Republican. The U.S. House Majority Leader DeLay “channeled millions of dollars into the state race through Political Action Committees” and therefore giving the Republican party the State House of Representatives and the State Senate in Texas. On the same topic, the Democrats wished to adjourn

To start off, redistricting happens every ten years in which members from the house of representatives and state legislator are redrawn. And in every state, there are some that loss or gain seats, and sometimes it just stays the same. The process for this is fairly long, most of which is done through the legislative process in which the state's legislature defts and passes bills which then the governor decides to vote on them. However, there are some people who disagree with the manner the government handles this situation, so some states have adopted the independent commissions to draw the final line. On another point, every state has its own timeline in which some states have the redistricting process ready and others are still in the middle

Through the Declaration of Independence, the American government is known to be run by the consent of the governed. However, there are many in the systems who try to work around that. One method that is infamous to the politically educated is gerrymandering, or “drawing district boundary lines for political advantage,” as the textbook puts it (Dye, pg 354). While redistricting in it of itself is a normal process, somewhat corrupt House members use it to secure their political positions. Not only are these members cheating their way to political authority, but also doing so without most of the public even knowing what gerrymandering is. When asked, “What do you think about gerrymandering?” most individuals in the CNN video say

Gerrymandering is the use of redrawing certain districts and manipulating the boundaries allowing a political advantage to one’s party and the other a disadvantage. This process occurs every ten years as new political candidates run to be a government official ( Fan 737 ). It started in 1812 where Governor Gerry redrew the district lines of Massachusetts, giving his party an advantage. That is how Gerrymandering got its name. Usually, the person who redraws the district goes after the urban areas because of how populated they are compared to rural areas. This is not good for the United States because of many reasons; Gerrymandering create districts that are confusing to voters because of the weird shapes and sizes, claims of the party can be contradictory, and the fact that gerrymandering is around, makes the people believe that the candidates are corrupted and running the right the vote. ( RULEY 785 ).

Explain how changes in state boundaries or populations could affect the balance of representation in this congress. Provide an example using the results above.