Gerrymandering: United States House of Representatives and Election District Boundaries

The first proposal, of changing the electoral system for the House of Representatives, would mean that each state is represented in proportion to its population. This entails that states with higher populations will receive more votes because they have more seats in the House. Less populous states may argue against this reform because they will have a disadvantage when it comes to voting on legislation. However, the reform also includes having each state serve as electoral districts. In this case, multi-member districts will be needed—proportional representation will require a larger district magnitude. Having these territorial subdivisions will help create an efficient legislative system because there would be less possibility of manipulating the votes—not as relevant to election results when seats are proportional. Having the votes distributed in this manner may help avoid a deadlock and therefore, allow for a faster process when passing legislation. In addition, minorities will have chance to be represented by possibly gaining a seat in a particular district—a highly populous

Forgette Richard, Garner Andrew, and Winkle John. “Do redistricting principles and practices affect US state legislative electoral competition? State Politics and policy quarterly, 20(9) (2009): 151 175.

     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.

Politics in the United States is a complex structure that is comprised of many systems. While most of these systems appear to work well, there are a few that are broken. A perfect example of a broken system is the district boundaries and the likelihood of gerrymandering. Multiple states across the country are subjected to gerrymandering, which is the act of dividing a county into election districts that provide one political party with an unfair advantage over the other. Gerrymandering is used to help or prevent a particular demographic from gaining adequate representation. In Florida, for example, there is controversy over Congressional District 5, which extends from Jacksonville down to Orlando in a way that creates a “minority-majority” district.

Furthermore, PR will eliminate much of the opportunity to predetermine elections through the mastery of gerrymandering, again allowing for a more accurately representative government.

The most politicized debate in American history has been the arguments made by the Federalists and the Antifederalists over the ideas and powers stated within the United States Constitution. A large number of authors who write about the debates between these two political groups present the ideas of the Federalist and Antifederalist as separate, opposing ideologies about how the U.S. Constitution should either stay the same for the sake of the country or be amended to grant border rights to the public and states. To begin a paper about how this assumption of the two factions always being at odds, first there should be an explanation about the Federalists’ and Antifederalists’ main arguments. The Virginia debate over ratification will be the used as the platform to present the details of their arguments. After those two main objectives are complete, the presentation of information found on the topics that the two parties had arguments between themselves over the true future of the Constitution, and that certain Federalists and Antifederalist shared certain ideas about the problems this Constitution could cause or solve for the United States. To conclude those ideas, a presentation of the political figures of this time period will be used to understand the similarities and differences between the parties. Towards the end of the paper, there will be an explanation of how the ideas of the two parties, mostly Antifederalists, have led to the creation of amendments added to the

More convincing than the fact that the majority of incumbents retained their seats by overwhelming margins is the shocking statistic that a quarter of the incumbents were uncontested.13 These politicians were so successful at arranging favorable districts that it was futile to even attempt a challenge. The author continued to examine particularly egregious cases of gerrymandering in New York, including that of Senator Guy Vellela, who once selected voters for his district by individual city blocks.14 Senator Guy Vellela, as well as the other state senators of New York, are prime examples of politicians exploiting gerrymandering to manipulate the outcome of elections and improve their outcomes.

The most quoted part of the declaration today is probably “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It is mostly used for black lives matter or any feminist “peaceful protests”. How is this connected to gerrymandering? Well, the entire point of gerrymandering is to have the opposing parties votes not count as much, in 2012 Republicans used gerrymandering very well. This would drive the Democrats crazy, yes their votes didn't count as much. Yes, that is unconstitutional, many may argue that some parts of gerrymandering are ok, but that is false. All votes should count the

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

In 1787, one of the most debated issues was the size of the House of Representatives. During the Constitutional Convention, the delegates proposed that 40,000 citizens should be represented by one congressional district. However, George Washington intervened and argued that 40,000 was too high, and reasoned that 30,000 was more reasonable and allow people to be represented adequately Washington’s proposal was incorporated in Article One, Section Two of the Constitution which states “representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” While the number of representatives did increase throughout the history of the United States, the number has been set at 435 members since 1929. Congress in 1929 passed the Permanent Apportionment Act that set the number of representatives at 435, which was set after a 1910 census. Currently each representative represents 700,000 citizens and congressional seats are redistricted around the nation based on population changes. But the currently number of representatives does not adequately represent the present population and a single district cannot represent a huge number of people. Therefore, the current number of representatives must be increased.

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.

In response to the judge’s ruling, prison gerrymandering also violates the “one person, one vote” principle as the US census categorizes a prisoner’s residence as their former home before incarnation rather than the location of the prison, therefore politicians have phantom votes in districts and phantom votes of inmates who legally cannot vote. Prison gerrymandering also decreases the actual voting power of the residence who do live in a certain district because when counting the number of prisoners who are manipulated by district drawings to vote in a district where they do not reside, the number jeopardizes the voters who legally vote for change in their district as their vote doesn’t exactly count in proportion. In regard to Jefferson County’s

If I were to choose an improvement to make an American political institution better, I would choose to improve the process of redistricting. I would change redistricting in a way that would make it fairer such as getting someone who is not in either major party to draw the lines for new districts after every census instead of someone from the current party in power. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, (NCSL), redistricting is “the process of redrawing state legislative and congressional district boundaries every 10 years following the decennial United Census.”(Redistricting) Basically redistricting is the election of state legislators, Congress members, and many country and municipal offices who are grouped into districts

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

This essay determine how 100 congressional seats should be divided among the 10 states of the union. The number of seats in a state should (in any fair distribution) be proportional to its ratio in the population. Therefore rounding according to some (acceptable) rule should be applied.