describe the two ways that officials gerrymander a district?

Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Gerrymandering isnt new, but recent trends in US politics have amped up its national importance. b.Gerrymandering "Packing" occurs when a.legislative districts are redrawn in a way that concentrates members of a particular party in as few districts as possible, thereby limiting the overall number of seats that party might win. What effect do the methods have on the opposing party? Gerrymanderingoften leads to disproportionate politicians from one party being elected to office. Redistricting Explained: Your Questions Answered - The New York Times The first method is called the "excess vote." Gerrymandering is when congressional district lines are manipulated and changed to give favor to one party over another. Reapportionment & Redistricting Webquest Answer Sheet.docx This manipulation of electoral districts is known as gerrymandering. MARTIN: So how do you relate this to the current moment? MARTIN: And I do want to point out that this is something that has - both parties have been accused of this, and both parties have been successfully litigated against. The program began with successful efforts to regain majorities in key states includingPennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin. "Packing" means that they are concentrating the opposing party's voting power to one district to reduce their voting power in other districts. Instead of attempting to change which people turn out, they can, usually once a decade, simply change the district lines so that some votes will matter more than others. Larry Hogan from the process) and one in New Mexico. Upload your study docs or become a Course Hero member to access this document Continue to access Term Fall Professor Belveal Tags Did you employ either of these strategies in your mapmaking? Its a shift we helped design and we pushed for. There are more possibilities, and they add up. It is a way that governing parties try to cement themselves in power by tilting the political map steeply in their favor. The district runs awkwardly along Interstate 85, sometimes no wider than the highway itself, and other times wide and bulky. Describe the two ways that officials gerrymander a district? So the question is, is it in the interest of African-Americans to have African-American legislators elected? The people who've . FAHEY: So once every 10 years, after we complete the census, we end up redrawing our election maps for who your state representatives will be and who your federal congressional members will be. So from the actual election structure we have, gerrymandering has impacted it. Then, look up each word and add any other relevant information to your definition. For many state legislatures, the importance of new maps is even higher. In the game, you belonged to either the yellow or purple party, and your party got to be in charge of drawing Hexapoliss districts. Regardless of which party is responsible for gerrymandering, it is ultimately the public who loses out. For Congress, the GOP doesnt have sole control over maps for the entire country; Democratic-controlled states and independent commissions will submit maps, too. Were you able to gerrymander your party to power? The practice has been a thorn in the side of democracy for centuries, and with the new round of redistricting its a bigger threat than ever. The US Supreme Court killed any hopes of federal litigation to counteract partisan gerrymandering, ruling in a 5-4 decision that federal judges cant strike down maps on those grounds. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Louisiana each have Democratic governors and GOP-controlled legislatures, and that will mean some tense negotiations. Rosenberg, Matt. Thats how people express themselves. Fifty years ago, before the days of majority-minority districts, Eva Clayton ran for Congress and lost. TOPIC 4.6 INTERNAL BOUNDARIES - Course Hero The purpose of gerrymandering is to grant one party power over another by creating districts that hold dense concentrations of voters who are favorable to their policies. "Cracking" means that they are diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across several districts. Im running for Congress. In the 1992 elections, the new majority-minority districts achieved their goal, and 17 new black representatives were elected to Congress. Let me tell you that the Voting Rights Act has the potential to really shake things up and frankly it is frightening to the Democrats. Very quickly, the Republican politicos figured out that if you drew three minority-majority districts, it meant that there were three incredibly Democrat districts, which meant there were more Republicans in the other eight or 10 districts. So the Republicans went to the African-American community, largely Democratic, and said, Lets make a deal. In South Carolina, blacks and Republicans are already talking about a crescent-shaped district through the southern part of the state. The alliance, when it comes to redistricting, between the Republicans, mostly in the South, and the African-Americans, mostly in the South, has been called The unholy alliance. Certainly, the Republicans knew what they were doing. They can try suing, but the Supreme Court has limited their legal options. The goal: to see if they can gerrymander their party to power. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. I want to just be clear that both parties have been accused of this, and both parties have been successfully sued because of this. Political gerrymandering characteristically results in a greater number of wasted votes for the disfavoured party (i.e., votes for a losing candidate or votes for a winning candidate in excess of the number needed to win), a discrepancy that can be represented as an efficiency gap between the parties when the difference between wasted votes is divided by the total number of votes cast. I personally would vote for what my constituents want because it would mean I would get more and more votes from people. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The purpose of gerrymandering is to grant one party power over another by creating districts that hold dense concentrations of voters who are . Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Some or all of these techniques may be deployed by map drawers in order to build a partisan advantage into the boundaries of districts. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Partisan state legislatures control redistricting in most states, though some have handed the process over to commissions; there are many variations in exactly how things work across the 50 states (as the essential All About Redistricting website enumerates). Representation in the House is based on state population and there are a total of 435 representatives, so some states may gain representatives while others lose them. You may not be able to have both. Regardless of election outcomes or court decisions, Americas political divisions are unlikely to go away anytime soon. It could be five Democratic seats. Democrats dont like the fact that Republicans took over a lot of state legislatures, and what weve seen with Democrats across the country is to look for bogeymen under every rock they can to explain their electoral failures. And, of course, it is my opinion that Democrats want to use the courts to do what they cant win at the ballot box, and that is elections. Across the country, gerrymandering is facing challenges in court. The states that use advisory commissions are: Politician commissions: Ten states create panels made up of state lawmakers and other elected officials to redraw their own legislative boundaries. The concept of gerrymandering stems back to the 1800s when Elbridge Gerry, who would go on to become vice president for James Madison, approved a partisan district in the Boston area that resembled a salamander. It's their choice. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. These are the easiest to predict Republican-controlled states will try to draw pro-Republican maps, and Democratic-controlled states will try to draw pro-Democratic maps. They would probably come here to Cumberland, divide it up and do something like this, and try to find a district by combining all over the state. A lot, says Katie Fahey. Gerrymandering also looks likely to get worse because the legal framework governing redistricting has not kept up with demographic changes. Take a closer look at and read about proposed maps in Texas and New York. Multiple seats, perhaps, in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia. Done right, redistricting is a chance to create maps that, in the words of John Adams, are an exact portrait, a miniature of the people as a whole. In 1812, the Boston Gazette coined the word in reaction to Massachusetts's governor Elbridge Gerry's redistricting of the Boston region. It is a strategy used by ruling parties to firmly establish their control of the political landscape. A basic objection to gerrymandering of any kind is that it tends to violate two tenets of electoral apportionmentcompactness and equality of size of constituencies. Law of the Sea Definition & Examples | What is The Law of the Sea? How do you think the outcome of the game would have been different had the opposing party had control of redistricting? Every 10 years, states redraw their legislative and congressional district lines following the census. WebQuest Companion Worksheet Fillable.pdf - WQ: Gerrymandering has been criticized for disenfranchising voters and fueling polarization. But time is running short. Draw upon what you learn from this lesson on gerrymandering to accomplish these goals: 21 chapters | And Democrats failed to make much progress flipping state legislative chambers. New majority-minority districts, where minority residents of voting age made up more than 50 percent of the population. Its a way that a political party can make those pesky voters less relevant. "Gerrymandering is not hard,"Sam Wang, the founder of Princeton University's Election Consortium, wrote in 2012. In GerryMander, you draw voting districts to favor your party and win the election. The Brennan Center crafts innovative policies and fights for them in Congress and the courts. But we all care about our local community - our water, our schools, our safety, our ability to make a livelihood. The term is derived from the name of Gov. I think people think their agenda, their way of thinking about the world, is what's, quote-unquote "best for everybody," and so maybe they justify it that way. That makes it possible to draw districts in contrived ways so as to dilute or waste your opponents votes. A court could take a neutral approach, or act politically if the justices are so inclined (for instance, Democrats have a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but conservatives have a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court). While that guarantees a victory for the party, it also makes that party less competitive in other districts and diminishes its power. The first is called packing. The rest of the country has either divided partisan control of the process or has handed it off to commissions. Any election year ending in zero because it's a census year are the years that redistricting happened, which is what has made 2020 so extra-important - because it will have implications between now and 2030. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/learning/lesson-plans/lesson-of-the-day-a-gerrymandering-game.html. Democrats have limited options for fighting back. I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. Because of residential segregation, it is much easier for map drawers to pack or crack communities of color to achieve maximum political advantage. How can we move around each voter to make sure as many voters as we can that we want to vote the ways for us stay in our district? Cracking splits groups of people with similar characteristics, such as voters of the same party affiliation, across multiple districts. And shifts in the parties political coalitions weakened some GOP gerrymanders as the decade progressed, since Democrats began to perform better in suburbs. I mean, thats just what it is. In a democracy, what we have as a final tool are our votes. Every 10 years, after the census, the United States redraws the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts to reflect changes in the population. Why do you think Congress made this kind of racial gerrymandering illegal? Need your help! The remedy? They have the power to gerrymander a few states of their own, most notably New York, but Republicans have total control of map-drawing in more (and more populous) states. Then, youll explore additional articles and videos to find out what redistricting and gerrymandering look like in the real world. Gerrymandering - Congressional Districts on Census Data - ThoughtCo But presumably other people feel - are more concerned about, say, the health of their constituents or the - you know, the - just being fair to everybody or just - you know what I'm saying? "A state may take race into account as one of several factors when drawing district linesbut without a compelling reason, race cannot be the 'predominant' reason for a districts shape," according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 5. The goal is to draw boundaries of legislative districts so that as many . What are cracking and packing? Why? But sometimes the process is used to draw maps that put a thumb on the scale to manufacture election outcomes that are detached from the preferences of voters. 1. With gerrymandering comes strong opinions. But what is it? How Vacancies in the US Congress are Filled, What Is a Caucus? The resulting maps gave Republicans a net advantage in the House though experts disagreed on exactly how much of one, the GOP likely gained several seats at minimum because of it. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. They were able to then secure those legislators, and then those legislators drew gerrymandered maps that then have allowed them to not only just get reelected, but there was a full strategy to then take out conservative legislation - kind of take the same bill across all the states they were able to gerrymander and then push them into the legislature. The Courts ruling, however, did not consider whether the efficiency gap amounted to the judicially discernible and manageable standard it had been waiting for. How does race intersect with the process of redistricting? Gerrymandering and its Effect on Fair Representation - FairVote Civics, Economics and Geography: Chapter 7 Flashcards | Quizlet Causes of Death, Determinants of Mortality & Mortality Rates, Prorupted State, Elongated State & Fragmented State | Concepts, Examples & Shapes, Boundaries Overview & Types | Physical, Political & Cultural Boundaries, Geography of Religion | Relationship, Impact & Conflicts, Supranationalism, Devolution & Democratization | Concepts, Forces, & Examples. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. See if you can win, and then consider: what does winning mean for democracy? The public is largely shut out of the process," wroteErika L. Wood, the director of the Redistricting & Representation Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. What happened was, it led to complete Republican dominance of virtually every state south of the Mason-Dixon line. So its sort of like taking our fight against racism, and the advancements weve made and the laws weve used and literally turning them around on their head and saying, These are the laws you want and you fought for? 1. Describe the two ways that officials gerrymander a district? What effect do the methods have on the opposing party? And in one unanimous decision today, the court said that North Carolinas redistricting plan violated the 1982 Voting Rights Act by reducing black voting power. The court ruled that under the Voting Rights Act, minority groups should have the opportunity to elect their preferred candidates to Congress. It has a surprising history and an uncertain future, as the nation awaits a ruling by the Supreme Court. What strategies did you figure out along the way? Rather than allowing for new candidates to challenge congressional candidates, gerrymandering virtually assures that an incumbent (a politician currently in office) will be reelected. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts . If not, why not, and how do you think the process could be better? In the House of Representatives, the current map is already tilted in Republicans favor. Before you play the gerrymandering game, get familiar with a few key terms that youll encounter: Write down what, if anything, you know about each of these terms. MARTIN: So could you just start simple for people who may be a long way away from their last civics class? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/gerrymandering-1435417. More African-American districts meant less Democrats were elected. I dont think the African-American community was out to destroy the Democratic Party, but they were out to get the representation they thought they were entitled to. Her group also worked on a similar measure that was approved by voters in Virginia last week. Political Gerrymandering Explained | Subscript Law The plaintiffs argued that efficiency gaps of 7 percent or greater were legally significant because they were more likely than smaller gaps to persist through the 10-year life of a redistricting plan. Rosenberg, Matt. The second method is known as the "wasted vote." The tool also makes it easy to see how politicians can use gerrymandering to gain an advantage in elections. By packing black voters into a limited number of districts, there were fewer Democrats everywhere else. It just sounds like - because it's clear - I mean, the president has been trying to discredit mail-in balloting, absentee voting for months now. ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/gerrymandering-1435417. Did you employ any of the strategies you learned about? She is the executive director of a group called The People, and she successfully led an effort in her home state of Michigan to create a bipartisan redistricting commission led by citizens rather than officials. - Definitions, Laws & Rules, What Is Parole? The problem was that most African Americans didn't live together in one geographic district. Katie Fahey, thanks so much for joining us. Rosenberg, Matt. In battleground Pennsylvania, for example, the congressional map gave Republicans a virtual lock on 13 of the state's 18 congressional districts, even in elections where Democrats won the majority of the statewide congressional vote. And you also saw a bit of that in Pennsylvania. That's an . Residential segregation and racially polarized voting patterns, especially in southern states, mean that targeting communities of color can be an effective tool for creating advantages for the party that controls redistricting. They also tweak the border so the homes of senators aren't in the district. It they are looking for more of a peoples person outlook, they should vote for what there constituents want. If you could pack many of the Democrats into just two districts where they have an overwhelming advantage, and crack the remaining Democrats across the other eight, youd get a result like this where Republicans are set to dominate an evenly divided state just because of how the lines are drawn. Put another way: If line-drawers were instructed to ignore partisanship entirely, they would be more likely to draw a map that favors Republicans, because of where Republicans and Democrats happen to live (Democrats are concentrated in cities). Essentially, you might just be wasting your party's votes. And why do you say it's gotten completely distorted? Illinois is the only other big state where Democrats control map-drawing, but their gains there will likely be smaller. And Democrats face an added challenge. 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