Category: Gerrymandering

In both houses members of congress are elected by a measure known as the direct popular vote, the process breaks down as follows, members of the senate are voted in through a statewide election, and house representatives are elected in the congressional district. The rule of how senators are elected is laid out in the constitution under Article 1, Section 3 of our constitution wherein each state will pick its two senators, the idea behind this is to create a solid bond between federal and state legislators. Before 1913 this system saw a lot of issues because of the many seats it left vacant and it even resulted in some states not being represented. The 17th amendment was passed to combat this issue that same year brought about the system we have currently, the requirement for the senate that they must be thirty years of age, a citizen of the united states for nine years, and a resident of the state at the time of the election. Two senators are sent to represent their state in the senate and senate terms last six years but they can be reelected as many times as their constituents want and are elected in a statewide election. In contrast to this, the house of representatives is based on population and has a two-year term. The house of representative requirement is that the member must be twenty-five years old and must have been a citizen for seven years. Currently, California has fifty-three representatives while small states like Vermont and Delaware have one representative because of their size. As we discussed in class even with a small population of 961,939, Delaware gets to send two senators to congress, the same as a big state like Texas, which has 28.30 million people sent.

After briefly explaining how congressional elections happen and what the rules and requirements are to become elected, I want to move on to the next part of the question which is why the rules used in congress impact the election the way it does and why it’s become harder to accept that notion of representation in US congress. People continuously talk about Gerrymandering as the biggest issue, which is a way to gain unfair political advantage via manipulations of district boundaries. As discussed extensively in class, gerrymandering can be done in two main ways either cracking which is spreading out the voting power of one district to weaken their voice as a whole, or the use of packing wherein votes are lumped in with other districts concentrating the opposing party’s voting power. Moreover, in our topic of representation Gerrymandering usually helps or hinders certain demographics making it seem like those getting elected are picking who will vote for them instead of just being voted for naturally. This is where the major headache of representation comes into play. In answering the question are we really represented Harry Enten the author in one of our readings states that even though Gerrymandering adds to Uncompetitive elections, extremism, and gridlock, these factors are not the only cause of the problem, in the article Ending Gerrymandering the author discusses the complexities of drawing a district citing that there isn’t really a right way to do this and it would be better to promote competitiveness or nonwhite representation? One could argue that the decrease in the number of competitive states is a clear sign that voters are being left behind or dragged along and added to votes for candidates they wouldn’t in fact vote for however gerrymandering cannot be blamed alone because the idea of “Self-sorting” also plays a major role individual are moving into regions with people of political likeness with them. In the article, the author calls this Pre-gerrymandered. In the next topic Extremism, the author Enten talks about having more extreme representatives in the house than there were 20 years ago, what we can digest from extremism is how it causes the polarization we see today and a bulk of the childish behavior congress engages in more regularly. Finally Gridlock the article point Obama’s opinion on Gerrymandering being a key cause of Gridlock He stated and I quote “I think gerrymandering has resulted in a situation in which – with 80 percent democrat districts and 80 percent Republican districts and no competition, that leads to more and more polarization in Congress, and it gets harder and harder to get things done.”- Barack Obama (2015 NPR ). So, with that said it is very clear that the question of what it means to be represented in America is complicated yet simple. With so much obvious manipulation of the system, I doubt Americans are fairly represented. The solution to this dilemma, lies in the hands of voters, I think there should be a push for more accountability and those voting should look to candidates who are more moderate in political belief so we can see more bipartisan in our congress. The last thing I would really change with congress is the re-election possibility for senators, I would propose that senators can only serve one term of six years or limit it to no more than two sets of six terms so they are forced to act on behalf of those who sent them instead of just those loyal to them.

Gerrymandering is the practice of “dividing an area” into “political units” which ultimately helps one political party (Merriam-Webster). However, these divisions are typically unfair and leave one political party at a disadvantage. The philosophy behind gerrymandering is to not give an overwhelming amount of safe seats to the person who is probable to win, but to give the opponent a number of safe seats. While the person who is probable to win will still likely win, the playing field is leveled out (Ingraham). This philosophy is rarely practiced, and instead, Congressional districts are drawn always favoring the person likely to win.

Gerrymandering is also everchanging. Politicians are allowed to select their voters rather than the voters to choose their representatives because of state legislatures being able to redraw state boundaries after every 10 years. In addition to this, computer programs are able to obtain detailed information on a voter’s location and political preferences by “cracking” and “packing” (Short). Cracking refers to “diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts” whereas packing is “concentrating the opposing party’s voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts” (“Gerrymandering”). Furthermore, the Supreme Court allows this practice ruled by the 1986 court case “Thornburg vs. Gingles.”

This court case stopped seven new voting districts that helped minority voters in North Carolina. Instead of giving power to minorities, the ruling created districts where minority voters were concentrated, which supports the packing of voters. Unfortunately, ending gerrymandering or resolving these issues are not simple. There are several ways to prevent the extent of gerrymandering, but each solution lacks aspects that are critical to the voting process, such as recognizing minorities or taking geography into account (Short).

However, if there is a solution to gerrymandering, it could potentially create less extreme partisans and help the amount of diversity in Congress. Gerrymandering also makes elections less competitive and the people in these districts would be more connected to their representative, as there would be less of a cultural divide and would hopefully represent the minorities better as well. This would ensure both populations to be represented more equally than in previous elections and each person would feel as if he or she could make a difference within the federal government.

Single Member District Representation follows a set of rules that differentiates itself from multi-member districts and creates some advantages for being represented by one official. The first rule is that for every legislative district, there will be one representative. The second rule follows up on the first by stating that each district must be contiguous; they cannot be distant from one another. The third rule came later in 1962 from a court case called Baker v. Carr, it resulted in districts being established on the principle of one man, one vote. For example, if district A had a population of 100,000 and district B had a population of 1,000,000, you would want to live in district A because you had a far better chance of being rightly represented in that district. The fourth rule was established by The Voting Rights Act of 1965 which was created in order to protect against racial discrimination in voting, which protects majority-minority districts. A fifth rule that has never been enforced states that districts need to be compact and that they should avoid making changes. There was almost a sixth rule enforced with Single Member District Representation. The sixth rule was to get rid of ideological gerrymandering, meaning that officials could wipe out Republicans in a district for more liberal votes, but this rule fell through. The United States uses Single Member District Representation.

A downside of Single Member District Representation is that it gives over-representation to the majority party. For example, party A can have 10% representation, making party B have 0% representation. On the other hand, if it were to happen that party A had 5% representation and party B had 5% representation, then this would also be unfair because no party gets the majority. The fairest result would be if party A got 6% and party B got 4% representation because A would still get the majority they deserved.

A real-life example of how Single Member District Representation is flawed can be seen in 1994 when Republicans won over The House of Representatives after the Democratic party had the House for forty years in a row. The Republicans won over the House by saying that they thought there were not enough minorities in the government. Republicans wanted to create more majority-minority districts. Minorities were swung voters so whoever talked about minorities was the party they typically voted for. The Republicans’ claim of wanting to put more minorities in the House had a very little positive impact on black representation in the House and didn’t help any other minority group. A key component of Single Member District Representation is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is defined as manipulating the boundaries of an electoral district in order to achieve the goal of favoring one party over the other. The Republicans used a form of gerrymandering called packing, which neutralized the voting by concentrating the Democrats voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts. The Republican’s goal of creating minority districts actually hurt minorities more. Democrats recognized this and sued Republicans in the court case known as Miller v. Johnson (1996). Republicans ended up winning this case because their tactics were justified by saying that it’s okay to draw districts based on minority race so long as it’s not the only criteria. But Republicans would strategically make the other criteria be high school dropout rate, low-income households, or single mother households, all of which are typically associated with minorities. Republicans were basically using the same variables, targeting minorities, and hurting them more.

I contend that years ending in zero are the most important election years because the census occurs during this time, meaning it decides the way the government runs for the next five years. For example, in Texas in 1990, the Governor was Democrat Ann Richards, but in 1994 George W. Bush beat her in the elections, making a Republican the governor. In 1996, the Senate switched from Democrat to Republican. By 2000, when the census occurred, the governor, lieutenant governor, and senate were all Republican, while the House was a Democrat. Gerrymandering created maps that favored the Republicans so that in 2002, the House became Republican, and that’s when Texas became a red state. Basically, every ten years during the census, the politicians pick who votes for them, people don’t get to. In order to overcome gerrymandering, there needs to be a high voter turnout.

Another reason people dislike Single Member District Representation is that if one votes for a third-party member, it’s almost guaranteed that candidate won’t win, giving more support to the candidate whose highest in the polls. This is what people mean when they say “choose the lesser of the two evils” because voting for a third party member is seen as pointless as they won’t win and will instead make the party member that that voter disagrees with the most, end up winning. There’s a solution to this problem created in the Louisiana Primary. They require a majority so they do a runoff election to make sure there are only two candidates after the first round if there’s no majority. But, there is a flaw with this solution because say if there are two Republicans and ten Democrats running, the Democratic votes are divided against themselves, making the top two voted-on candidates Republican. Another flaw with the Louisiana Primary is that if the majority of everyone’s second choice is the same candidate, it won’t matter because people’s first choice candidates are the other two candidates.

Proportional Representation is used by the majority of Democracies. To simply define Proportional Representation, the percent of support a party gets is the percent the party receives. A flaw with Proportional Representation can be seen in the country Italy. In Italy, a party gets representation even if they get .01% of votes, this creates a lot of small parties. But there are also examples of stable Proportional Representation, for instance, in Germany. In Germany, a party needs 5% of the votes in order to get representation as a party. This hurdle eliminates all the small, little parties or gives opportunities for those small parties to join together to form one party. There are pros and cons to both Proportional Representation and Single Member District Representation, but I contend that if used in a stable manner, Proportional Representation is the better of the two. My preference for Proportional Representation is best shown through its stable use of it in Germany. After WWII, Germany created six political parties, giving German citizens a nice array of steady choices of parties, unlike Italy which has too many options, and the U.S. which has too few.

Mark Twain once said, “if voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” The United States was conceived under the democratic ideology that the American people should have the authority and duty to elect their leader. Through the enactment of Article II Section 1, of the U.S constitution, the Executive Branch of the American government was established, which led to the first presidential election in 1789. Today, presidential elections are held every four years, where presidential candidates from both parties embark on massive election campaigns to gain as much voter support as possible. In recent elections though … U.S elections are not safe enough because they are being negatively impacted by social forces, political forces, as well as technological flaws.

First, I would like to discuss how political forces are making U.S elections unsafe. Politicians fix the elections district by district through a process called gerrymandering. Politicians systematically draw voting districts in ways that reduce the power of their opponent’s party. This segmentation makes American democracy far less representative than it could be. Although both parties participate in creating such districts since the election of 2016 political maps were intensively drawn by Republicans to benefit their party. According to David Lieb in an AP news article on June 25, 2017, “gerrymandering gave republicans as many as 22 additional U.S House seats.” You might be wondering how gerrymandering creates an unsafe election. Well to begin it’s creating an unfair election system where even if Democrats have a big turn-out at the polls they are still being limited by the advantage it’s giving to the Republican party. Gerrymandering harms the way a representative democracy should work like.

Secondly, I would like to discuss how social forces are making U.S elections unsafe. Many people’s right to vote depends on the state they live in. There’s a trend that many states are choosing to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. Individuals with felony convictions who have served their time and been released from prisons cannot vote. According to Brent Staples in a New York Times article on November 18, 2014, “this system disproportionately blocks black men with 13 percent of them not being able to talk. [ TALK ABOUT MASS INCARCERATION] Does there seem to be a trend, no representation? Polls Lastly, I would like to discuss the technical flaws that are putting the elections at risk for a fair count. In the 2016 election, it was brought up to the attention of the Americans that the Russian government was colluding with Donald Trump to aid him in winning the election According to Jon Swaine in The Guardian article on January 19, 2018, “Twitter admitted that it removed more 50,000 accounts and reported them to investigators”

We discussed reapportionment and congressional redistricting in class. Patterson discusses them, as well. Why are reapportionment among the states and redistricting within states a problem for U.S. as a whole? What about their impact on individual House members? Discuss and explain.

Reapportionment among states and redistricting is an issue given there is an urgent issue with gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is inherently bad because it is unethical and it harms voters because of how it reduces the value of votes in an isolated manner. It impacts individual House members because it subverts the purpose of it. The point of gerrymandering is to draw district lines in ways that maximize the political party’s power. A given example is when the Republican party gets to draw the lines, then the lines are drawn to keep the Republicans in power, or to increase their power.

In fact, I believe the idea of “voting districts” is arguably undemocratic because it denies voters in all areas but one a voice in choosing their representatives since all elected representatives will influence laws that will affect everyone. This is because you do not get to vote at all for the vast majority of politicians who will have an effect to a certain extent on your life. After all, we do not live in a pure democracy, but a democratic republic, which is why we have voting districts. Gerrymandering is complicated given that it is an exercise of power aimed strictly at keeping and increasing political power. Particular communities do not factor in the minorities that live in a given area and if they should be crammed into one district so that they can elect a representative who will specifically represent their interests which often gives gerrymandering a racial component. But unless the United States is ready to embrace a full and direct democracy, we simply cannot say “no” to gerrymandering.

Discuss the impeachment process. You may use examples from earlier impeachments and/or the current one. Where does the process initiate? What about the trial for removal from office. Add detail. For this one question, you may use outside sources.

Impeachment is defined as a process for removing high-ranking public officials from office. The president, vice-president and all civil officers including federal judges shall be removed from office on impeachment for any convictions on bribery, treason, and other misdemeanors and high crimes. The process will start with the House of Representatives investigating the individual. If the house feels there is enough evidence that the person may be guilty of some crime, they will vote in favor of an impeachment trial. A simple majority vote by the house is enough to file formal impeachment charges. The case is turned over to the Senate once the house has filed formal charges against the individual. The Senate acts like a court and tries the individual for the impeachable offense. If the President is the one being impeached, the Supreme Court’s chief justice will lead the Senate hearings. It takes a 2/3rds majority vote of the senate members to find someone guilty of an impeachable offense. If the person is found guilty, they will be thrown out of office and may not hold any other political office.

The House is currently proceeding with impeachment hearings against the president, Donald Trump. There was an exploitable political scandal involving Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and Ukrainian corruption that occurred near the end of Obama’s Presidency. What is suspected is that trump spoke with the Ukrainian leader and threatened to withhold any funds and aid that Congress had approved to be given to Ukraine; hundreds of millions of dollars; should they not pursue investigation into Joe Biden regarding the original scandal involving Biden and his son with the Ukrainian natural gas producer. It is not clear yet if Biden and his son were involved in criminal actions. However, it is clear what Trump did was a form of extortion and he needs to take accountability for his actions.