Descriptive Representation Essay

Citizens of the United States rely heavily on their representatives to ensure that their concerns are heard, as well as that their needs are met. Descriptive and agency representation are two types of representation. Descriptive representation is the idea that one will get representation when they share characteristics with representatives such as race, religion, and gender (Conover, 10/13). This means that persons who have similar backgrounds and experiences should also have similar political preferences. Therefore, the characteristics of the elected representatives should clearly epitomize the characteristics of their constituents. The importance of descriptive representation regarding the American Democracy is that it enhances the representation

Therefore, Congress is supposed to be responsible for reflecting the ideas and beliefs of its constituents by speaking and acting on their behalf. Unfortunately, Congress has not been extremely representative of the American people. The New York Times article “Lost in America” elaborates on the negative feelings that today’s American’s have towards government officials. Referring to the number of Senators and Representatives in Congress who sought after and won re-election, the article stated “The tyranny of money, patronage, name recognition and gerrymandering in American politics guaranteed as much” (NYT, 8/26, A23). Congress consists mainly of white, middle aged, protestant, upper-class males (Conover, 10/13). Therefore several groups, such as women, non-whites, and the poor are significantly underrepresented within the membership of Congress. Also, as a result of consisting mainly of elite men, Congress does not appear to have the descriptive representation previously explained. In order to convey the idea of descriptive representation, members of Congress would need to look more comparable to a downsized America, with numbers reflecting similar demographics rather than focusing on one

This is when a districts lines have clearly been drawn by state legislators for partisan and incumbent benefit (Conover, 10/13). Therefore, gerrymandering lessens how representative Congress is of the American people because its purpose is increase the number of votes for whom the one drawing the district lines, usually the state legislator, wants to win, while making the votes of the opponents less significant. Typically, those in charge of redistricting focus on devaluing the votes of minorities in order to maintain majority. There are three types of gerrymandering; cracking, packing, and tacking. Packing is when there is a concentration of a certain type of voters into one district to reduce their influence (Conover, 10/13). For instance, an example of this would be if all the mass amount of Democrats within a district were packed into a single district. Cracking is when specific types of voters are spread out among several districts so they do not get enough votes in a district to win (Conover, 10/13). An example being breaking up groups of Hispanics over several districts so that their votes do not hold as much value as they would have had there been a significant number of Hispanics over the span of a few districts. Finally, tacking is when unusual shaped districts are created to focus majority party power, usually by tacking one district to another faraway district (Conover, 10/13). An example of this may