Preview

Gerrymandering Pros And Cons

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
743 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Gerrymandering Pros And Cons
Bipartisan politics have been an integrated part of the American democrats from almost the start. A two party system gives the constituent a competitive way to elect representatives that align with people's own party affiliation. GerryMandering is a manipulation of the process to gain an unfair advantage for one party over an opposition party. Since the legislative branch is charged with creating equal districts, meaning of the same geological size and population The legal argument to be made in opposition to Gerrymandering is derived from the 14th Amendments which has the line “one person, one vote”. Districts can be won with ease when legislators redraw district lines in their own favor. Gerrymandering biggest weakness is that it affects democracy by letting politicians pick their voters. By going through the types of gerrymandering and it’s history you will see that is time to find another way to redistrict. The U.S Census, is tasked with counting how many people are living in the United States every ten years.() This …show more content…
Most rulings stem from one decisive court case Davis V. Bander, that was heard in the late eighties. The court sustained that gerrymandering is a violation of voters rights and districts plans can be over. Unfortunately, the guidelines to do so were blurred. There is a strict burden of proving gerrymandering has affected an election outcome. One of the most successful ways in overturning Gerrymandering comes from The Voting Rights Act of 1975. In Section 2 of the Voters, Right Act places a provision that you cannot dilute the vote of minorities. The Voting Rights Act also implemented preclearance in the former Union States, giving the power to the national government to approve any legislation that affects voters. Recently, Texas and other states have found a reprieve from preclearance when a part of it was overturned in

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Before the 2010 census, Missouri had 9 representatives in the United States House of Representatives. After the census, Missouri lost a representative and now only has 8 representatives in the United States House of Representatives. This process of altering the number of representatives in a state after a census is known as reapportionment. As a result of this change in representation, Missouri also redrew its districts. The process of redrawing districts due to a census is known as redistricting. Unfortunately, this can lead to gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the process of using redistricting for the purpose of obtaining a partisan or factional advantage.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gerrymandering is a practice used when electoral districts are being set and are used to create a political advantage for specific group or party by manipulating district boundaries. For example, if one state was more likely to vote Republican you could have the area redrawn into an opposing district to win to allow better results for the opposing party.…

    • 315 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thus gerrymandering isn't unconstitutional. People can draw the districts however large or small that they want, there is no specification of what is lawful and what is not in the constitution There isn’t even a section or article in the entire constitution where it talks about redrawing districts. To be more specific there are no provisions (a condition or requirement in a legal document) outlined in the Constitution forbidding gerrymandering. Republicans held a majority in both houses of the state legislature, and a Republican was governor so of course they are going to draw districts into their favor; who wouldn’t? Furthermore there are little to no supreme court cases where gerrymandering was found unconstitutional. So if it is not unconstitutional or even in the constitution how can it be justiciable? The job of the supreme court is to uphold the constitution so if its constitutional it shouldn't be in the supreme…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The main purpose of gerrymandering is to increase the number of legislative seats that can be won by the political party which is in charge of redrawing the district boundaries during that period of time, and to create “safe” seats for the party’s incumbent legislators which are seats in which the incumbent will always win re-election. Gerrymandering is the redrawing of election district boundaries to give an electoral advantage to a particular candidate or party. It has been recognized as a part of the American political landscape since 1812. The term derives from a redrawing of US Representative districts in Massachusetts before the 1812 elections, when Elbridge Gerry was governor. People said the district was reminiscent of a salamander and thus the term Gerry-mander was coined. The Constitution requires that representation in the House of Representatives be apportioned to states on the basis of population. So, every ten years we count up the number of people living in each state and making sure that each state gets at least one House member, divide up the rest of the seats among the states equally. States with large populations get a bigger amount of house seats smaller states get just the one. A variety of Supreme Court cases, however, have applied the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to the process of drawing legislative districts resulting in a requirement that each district have roughly the same population. So after each Census, states and localities have to redraw their district lines to ensure that the districts are roughly equal. This process redrawing of district lines has been blamed for almost every problem in American politics. The redistricting process therefore became a target for political reformers. In 2008, Californians enacted Prop. 11 and created the Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC). State legislators would no longer be able to pick their own…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gerrymandering- is the drawing of congressional districts to produce a particular electoral outcome without regard to the shape of the district.…

    • 4881 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shelby County v. Holder 570 U.S. __ (2013) was a United States Supreme Court case concerning Section 5 and Section 4 of The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 5 forbids any state or district, that is an eligible voter discrimination area, from making any changes to their election process without federal permission. Section 4 labels a state or district as eligible if said state or district had a literacy test or any other unfair device in place as of November 1, 1964. Section 4 also clarifies how the Justice Department enforces Section 5 of The Voting Rights Act, so if Section 4 is found unconstitutional, then Section 5 can’t be kept either.…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It/205 Week 8 Checkpoint

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A census is the process of acquiring and recording information from the general public to determine population or housing numbers. For the 2010 census, the United States Census Bureau decided to implement a program called Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA). The program was intended to improve the data collection process by using handheld electronic devices. The mobile handhelds were to canvass addresses during the initial stage of the census.The FDCA program was important to the U.S. Census Bureau because it would replace the millions of paper forms and maps that were previously required to complete the census (Laudon&Laudon, 2011, p413). It was also important because it was meant to reduce costs, improve data quality, improve data collection efficiency, and encourage people to participate. Unfortunately, the FDCA program had problems.…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is like a game, call it the redistricting game. Gerrymandering is an act that tries to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group. Although the Supreme Court ruled gerrymandering unconstitutional in 1986, it could possibly challenge in court. To sum gerrymandering up in a sentence. The main purpose of redistricting is to allow fewer districts for a politician opponent. They take parts of a states that they feel like would think, communicate, have the same skin color or act like there opponent and the attempt to make as few districts including them as possible. Doing this gives that candidate a higher chance of getting votes of the people in other districts. Virginia is considered to be one of the most gerrymandered…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Each decade politicians become wound up for the political war of who will win the control of Congress for the next decade or possibly longer. One of the most effective ways of manipulating elections, shy of corruption, is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering (pronounced “garrey” mandering not “jerry” mandering) is the government’s advantage of one political party over another. It is the process of drawing weirdly shaped lines to define a district. The term is derived from Elbridge Gerry, who was one of the founding fathers, who drew a weirdly shaped district that resembles a salamander, it was henceforth dubbed gerrymandering. One of the unfortunate truths in American society and political life is that although we are told that each individual vote counts, the reality is that sometimes people’s votes are less equal. Political power in Congress is based upon population, the bigger the state is, for example California and Texas, the bigger the reward is of more seats in Congress, rather than Rhode Island or Delaware. The states with a higher population are appointed more seats and they get those seats from the states with fewer people that are counted from the census. The effervescent image of American democracy is that of a vibrant government that is open to change and subject to will of its voters, unfortunately this is an illusion. The problem with redrawing lines is that it eliminates the evaluation process that the public has by preventing competitive elections. I feel like it is just another loophole, oppressive scheme for political officials to try and dictate against us. Politicians seem to have the mutual feeling that it is a birth right for them to represent certain districts but we are still in a democracy, not a dictatorship or a monarchy, we have the right to elect who we feel represents our communities voice most appropriately and violating that right by eliminating the person we feel best suites us from our district it is violating our Constitutional and…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Electoral college is a process that is set up by our founding fathers in the constitution; it is a “compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens” (U.S Electoral College). Electoral college is an example of indirect democracy; therefore, we do not choose our president directly. Thus, electoral college is not democratic.…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After voters elect government officials to office, they are assigned districts to represent by their respective state. Every ten years, a census of the United States population is taken, and the boundaries are redrawn so that every district has approximately the same population to ensure equal voter representation and is not controlled by a major political party. It is important to draw the lines so that every community in a district is given the chance to voice their concerns and opinions. It is also important to make sure that the lines are not manipulated by a political party to gain political advantage - this is called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering gives control to a major political party and affects the issues that a government will look…

    • 208 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gerrymandering has become a real issue in many states. “Gerrymandering is the process where the majority party draws an election district map with district boundary lines that give itself…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Growing up as kids we were taught the design of our democracy and the constitutional principles. According to the Webster Dictionary a democracy is “ government in which people choose their leaders by voting, and where they are treated equally and have equal rights.” The definition does not capture what the United States feels it's a democracy. The United States is believe in the democratic ideology is, but is best known as a representative republic. In The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001: "Traditionally a republic is distinguished from a true democracy in that the republic operates through a representative assembly chosen by the citizenry, while in a democracy the populace participates directly in governmental affairs. In actual practice,…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A partisan election is an election where candidates are listed on the ballot with the indication of their political party. This is a system where judges are selected through partisan elections are voted in the electorate, and often run as part of a political party’s candidate. Texas is one of the few states that elect judges in partisan elections. It has been suggested that perhaps this is not an appropriate way to choose judges, given the nature of their job. It may have some flaws like lack of minority representation on the bench and perception of fairness. But it has some advantages too. On my opinion, I think it is faster than the other form of election as a general voter have that candidates on the ballot from democrats, republican or independent column.…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    APHG Unit Test Answers

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The current population pyramid of the United States has a noticeable bulge in the middle, which is due primarily to:…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays