Gerrymandering In The United States

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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 …show more content…
Once the population is recorded, the federal redistricting process begins and it is determined how many seats each state should receive in the House of Representatives. If there are any population shifts in the state, that is where redistricting comes into play as well as gerrymandering. According to Professor Justin Levitt’s website on redistricting, “in most states, the state legislature has primary control over the redistricting process, both for state legislative districts and for congressional districts.” Additionally, since the census establishes how many House members each state will have and the fact that senators are directly appointed by the people of said state, due to the 17th amendment, gerrymandering is only an issue involving House members. In order to present how incumbent House members secure their seats, think about it this way. For example, say Joe Schmoe is a Republican incumbent member of the House of Representatives and leads a city in the state of Florida, but he finds out that 60% of the population are Democrats. If Mr. Schmoe and other republicans were able to redraw district lines, they could make it so that it is nearly impossible for Mr. Schmoe to lose. As mentioned earlier, this method results in having everyone's vote not represented or count in an election. In …show more content…
However, the Supreme Court did mention that if race was being abused in redistricting then it would get involved, but other than that it will not intervene because it decided that “Fairness is not a judicially manageable standard” (Dye, pg 354). Throughout gerrymandering there are multiple forms of redistricting that can occur. For example, packing is the practice of redistricting so that one district has a high population of one party, while other districts are modestly filled with the opposing party so that the latter party wins election. Unfortunately, even though they had a high concentration in that one district, the first party essentially “wastes” their votes through no fault of their own. In North Carolina, something like this happened where a small river was used for gerrymandering as well as the packing of African Americans into few districts as possible so that most of the districts remained white and mainly Republican. With some states, most of their districts remain the same political party. Over the last decade in California, only one of its 53 districts changed hands, which could indicate that the other 52 districts are not fairly proportioned. Not surprisingly, there are those who defend the practice of gerrymandering, such as Corrine Brown of
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