“Redistricting” is possibly one of the least sexy words in the English language. It inspires about the same slightly uncomfortable, yet boredom-inducing dread as cleaning out your great aunt’s storage unit. It just does not seem to be terribly fun subject to think about, let alone care about. “Gerrymandering” is slightly better. Gerrymandering sounds a bit more sinister, even scandalous, and maybe even worth a moment of your consideration. The fact of the matter is, these two words are now functionally the same, and that’s a Bad Thing. We need to care about this. We need to care about this A LOT, because the politically-motivated drawing of district lines may ultimately be one of the biggest causes of our country’s inability to function as representative democracy. As Americans, we all want a functioning democracy, right?
First, we need to have a quick look at our redistricting process. Using Census data, each state is divided into districts. The number of districts is determined by population. There are a total of 435 districts in the country (Stay with me, this gets better, I promise!). So, the theory is, each Representative in the House is elected by and responsible to roughly the same amount of citizens. This sounds great. Our votes are tallied in our district, and we send our chosen somebody to Washington to represent our interests. Yay!
Here’s the problem: the districts are drawn by state legislatures, whose primary motivation for drawing the district map is to ensure their re-election. Districts, therefore, often have extraordinarily complicated shapes resembling creatures from fairy tales, and the entire purpose of these shapes is to manipulate the voting public into controllable blocks with controllable voting patterns. A political party currently in power in a state can split (or lump together) their opposition’s voters using census data so that those votes will become functionally ineffective. Thus, the political party in power can ensure that they stay in power, just by creative mapping.
So why should we care so much? Because we believe in our representative democracy. We need to know that our vote matters, that we ACTUALLY elect our Representatives. Otherwise, there is no point in voting. And voting is our tool for participating in government, for having a say in which policies effect our daily lives, our families, our well-being.
There is a way to ensure that each vote matters, and that elections are not rigged by map lines. We need legislation dictating that district lines are drawn based on population only, not on politics. We need to ensure that candidates are chosen by the voters, instead of voters being chosen by the candidates. We have the technology and data to ensure that voting districts are fairly drawn. We need to use it. We need the ruling party – whomever that may be – to not actively silence their opposition. Because opposition and debate, in all their messiness, are a fundamental key to a functioning, active democracy.
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ReplyDeleteHello Kat,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I really enjoyed reading your post! Your writing made me chuckle few times :) It was a very interesting topic and I agree entirely with your point. When I first learned about redistricting and gerrymandering in high school, it was really shocking to me at first because I grew up in another country where the president is directly elected by plurality vote. It definitely is a problem that the legislatures are abusing their power for their own benefits. I feel like this system makes some voices not to be heard. The minorities in each district might think that it is meaningless to vote because they know that they would not be able to win. So I agree that redistricting is deterring people from voting.
One thing I was worried is how to solve this problem. I thought it was a good solution to make a law that states the district lines are drawn based on population only, not on politics. However, the legislation is proposed by a member of the Congress, and the Congress consists of more Republicans than Democrats. So it is questionable whether there will be some sort of political factors when regulating this problem. Anyway, like you said, redistricting and gerrymandering are really needed for well-functioning democracy.
I agree, Gerrymandering or “Redistricting” is a very serious matter that we need to pay attention to. The way they redraw these lines baffles me, I cannot believe that they would allow this based on the way the district lines end up looking like. They obviously do not look like they did it “fairly” but of course the government still allows this. Probably because if the representatives stay in power in every state every time then they get to vote for whoever is on top of them and so on. Everyone gets to keep their power, so why would the government want to change anything. This ends up ruining our country, we cannot function as a representative democracy because we are not one. We are not fairly represented by the people we choose, because today I could be in one district and next time they will draw a line around my house, that is allowed by the way, which I don’t think is fair. What needs to be done is that they need to get rid of this process, not the whole redistricting process but the way they do it, if they use the census then that’s what they should use to draw the lines not let some draw lines around the people they want to vote for them, that is not fair at all and this country needs to be represented fairly in order for it to function properly.
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