Gerrymandering Case Study

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Gerrymandering is a way for a political party to keep control of a state by drawing the district lines unevenly. They make sure to keep a majority of the people in the districts are a part of their party, so their party will have more seats in the House of Representatives. This is a big problem because in most districts, there is no way for the minority party to win in those districts. The practice of Gerrymandering started in 1812, with the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry. In this year, he signed a bill to redistrict Massachusetts so that most of the districts would favor his own party. Gerrymandering is called what it is because it is a mix of the governor’s name and the word salamander, because one of the districts in Massachusetts …show more content…

This isn’t really how a democracy should work because it doesn’t promote democratic values in a democracy. But there are many types of gerrymandering that have different effects on the areas that are redistricted. One of these is used to make sure that the districts are drawn to have as many people who would likely vote towards one party included in one. This is called packing. Another strategy is cracking. Cracking is when swear pockets, which are essentially an area where a high percentage of people there are most likely to vote for one of the political parties, are torn apart to dilute voters in the districts. The final strategy is stacking, where two districts of the same party are merged to force the representatives of said districts to run against each …show more content…

The voters are stakeholders because they aren 't necessarily able to elect the party or representative of their choice, just because of where they live. The representatives are stakeholders because they aren 't always given a fair chance to win the district that they live in. Finally, the people that live in the districts that don 't vote are stakeholders because they are having someone selected that they don 't always support that is representing them in Congress. The process of gerrymandering began in 1812. Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts from June 10, 1810 to March 4, 1812, caused this process to be widely used by the country. When he was redistricting Massachusetts after the 1810 Census, one of the districts was oddly shaped like a salamander, as shown in the picture. It is not a dragon, even though there looks to be wings. There was a political analyst that saw the way the governor redistricted Connecticut and made the 1800s version of a meme: a political

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