The Detrimental Practice of Gerrymandering

In order to participate in major elections, third parties must first overcome a myriad of obstacles that have been put in place by both the founding fathers and politicians of our current two-party system. Rosenstone and his colleagues contend that the most important barrier in place to discourage the success of third parties is the plurality single-member districts that are the cornerstone of the American electoral process. Not only do single-member districts elect only one member to higher office, but they also allow such elections to occur without an electoral majority. If voters know that a third party is unlikely to receive a substantial amount of votes, they may believe a vote for the party would be a wasted vote. This requirement for a plurality of votes is especially detrimental for a third party presidential campaign, due to the fact that the Electoral College distributes electoral votes to the winner of each statewide vote (excluding Nebraska and Maine), and the only plausible way for a third party candidate to receive any electoral votes is to be extremely popular in a certain region of the United States. Unlike the two major

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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 resulting districts are normally referred to as gerrymanders and they are composed of pro-incumbents and partisans. Partisan gerrymandering involves the redrawing of political lines in order to favor a given political party. Incumbent gerrymandering involves the redrawing of boundaries in a bipartisan manner that is aimed at benefiting the incumbents on both sides of the aisle (Snider 2012).

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

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