Gerrymandering Pros And Cons

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Gerrymandering occurs when voting districts are redrawn to benefit one party over the opposing party in elections. For example, someone drawing the political boundaries might gather the opposing party’s voters together in one district in order to fixate their votes so that they influence only a few seats. They could also coerce their opposing voters into districts where the other party takes control of the power making it almost impossible for the opposing party to win elections. (Donnelly, 2017)
Eliminating gerrymandering would not by itself gravely increase the competitiveness of House and State legislative districts and diminish the historic level of polarization between the two dominant political parties. The roots of safe seats and partisan polarization go much deeper than the political manipulation of redistricting. These include the racial alteration of the South, the intellectual sorting of the two parties, the geographical grouping of likeminded voters and …show more content…
could eliminate gerrymandering. I looked at how other countries redistrict and it looks quite different than how we do it here. When the number of seats per district can be adjusted, the principle of “one person, one vote” can often be achieved without redrawing boundary lines at all. You just add a seat to a district that has grown, and take a seat away from the one that has shrunk. Also, a politically neutral figure could be responsible for redrawing the district lines. In Britain, the redistribution of parliamentary constituencies is carried out by a nonpartisan Boundary Commission. Parties can object the commission’s new map but their input is merely taking as a suggestion and their influence is very limited. Lastly, we could attempt to make the lines harder to manipulate. In Mexico, single member districts are drawn in concordance with an algorithm developed by a so called technical committee implementing “good government” criteria of districting. (Grofman,
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