Gerrymandering

The Week Staff talks about a way to rig elections legally. This method is called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering refers to the process of redrawing voting districts for political advantage. This is called “gerrymandering” because it was named after Elbridge Gerry, a governor from Massachusetts who redrew state level district lines in 1812 to keep his party dominant in the state legislature.  This tactic is used by both Democrats and Republicans.

When a candidate gerrymanders, they have to be running on a consensus year, which is every ten years. Before the election, the candidates reinvent, or redraw the voting districts. This allows the lesser populated districts voting count for more because there are less people. This happened in Texas and Colorado and this increased Republican representation. In Florida, the people voted to put a stop to this. The people did not want to give anyone unfair advantages. I agree to this decision, but unfortunately, nothing has been done to stop it. The Florida voting has just made this a bigger deal.

It is my belief that gerrymandering is a problem and needs to be solved to create fair and balanced voting districts. Elections should be won on the popular vote and not decided by politicians before election day. I think this should be illegal and I think the people should get to vote for who they want, not the politicians themselves. There are other ways to win elections  besides “gerrymandering” which is, in my opinion, cheating.