Gerrymandering
kosmo - See all 351 of my articles
Leave the First Comment
Gerrymandering
There will be gubernatorial elections in 38 states in 2009 and 2010. This is causing great happiness or sorrow among hard core party members, depending on the situation.
Why the big fuss?
In 2010, states will redraw district lines as a result of the census. Some states will lose members of the US House of Representatives, other will gain members, and some will simply redraw lines to balance the number of residents in each district.
Sounds incredibly straightforward and boring, huh?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics inside the art of redrawing the lines. If the governor is from the same party as the party that controls the state legislature, they can basically redraw the lines in any manner they see fit, and there’s not much the minority party can do.
The key is to consolidate the constituents of your opponent into as few districts as possibly. Let’s take an example state that has 100 voters and 10 congressional districts. 60 are party A, 40 are party B. If the voters are equally dispersed among the districts, party A would win 6-4 in every district and thus all of the states representatives in the US House would be from party A.
Let’s mix those voters up bit.
District 1: 10 A, 0 B
District 2: 10 A, 0 B
District 3: 10 A, 0 B
District 4: 6 A, 4 B
District 5: 4 A, 6 B
District 6: 4 A, 6 B
District 7: 4 A, 6 B
District 8: 4 A, 6 B
District 9: 4 A, 6 B
District 10: 4 A, 6 B
By pushing half of the party A voters into districts 1-3, party B created a situation where they hold an advantage in 6 of the 10 districts!
Obviously, in the real word, it isn’t quite that blatant. But politicians do draw some funny looking districts in an attempt to minimize the impact of the opponents. The name Gerrymander is in “honor” of Elbridge Gerry who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1810-1812. Some of the districts drawn during his tenure resembled a salamander. Gerry + salamander = gerrymander.
I loathe this practice nearly as much as I hate filibusters. I don’t know if there is a perfect solution, but I would propose creating a bipartisan commission to draw the boundaries – half of the members would be from each party. They would be forced to agree on a compromise (which, in theory, should be a map that is fair to both parties).
And if they refuse to agree? They would not be allowed to hold the next scheduled house race until the situation was resolved. A situation could be created where a state did not have representation for a period of time. Can you imagine the impact if a state like Texas or California was unable to seat representatives? My hope would be that the fear of backlash from voters would be enough to force a compromise.
Comments
Leave a Reply
Set up a customized icon to appear next to your comments! Is your comment not appearing? Don't worry - I'm not censoring you. Your comment just got caught in my spam filter. It will be viewable shortly (almost always within 24 hours, and much more quickly 90% of the time).Copyright for all content belongs to the writer identified in the byline. Copyright for any content not associated with a particular writer belongs to Kosmo. Copyright for comments belongs to the writer of the comment.
Content from The Casual Observer cannot be reused in any manner other than what is allowed under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law or the applicable copyright laws of your country.
© 2008-2010. All rights reserved.
Please email Kosmo at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com with any questions you may have.
Irrational Family
Category
Archives
SWAG (Sassy, Wise, And Grown up)
Recent Posts
Lazy Man and Money
Search by Writer
Blogs run by our writers
Financial Blogs
Fun Blogs
