You Call This Democracy?: Chapters 2–3

So she decided to bring up an issue she hoped her whole family could get behind: ending gerrymandering.

The map included a district that resembled a salamander, thus creating a “Gerry-mander.” The Salem Gazette published a political cartoon and wrote that “this [map] inflicted a grievous wound on the Constitution.”

Every ten years, the U.S. government conducts a census, counting everyone in the country.

The districts should also be contiguous, which means the voting district is one connected area.

They draw maps to protect people already in office (called incumbents), to undermine political foes, and to fracture communities that might vote together to remove them from office.

They draw maps to protect people already in office (called incumbents), to undermine political foes, and to fracture communities that might vote together to remove them from office.

Mucking with voting maps can determine the outcomes of elections before anyone votes, preordaining who represents us in the U.S.

“Democrats added a strange-looking appendage to the district, reaching all the way down into the affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs to scoop up Democratic voters."

“Democrats added a strange-looking appendage to the district, reaching all the way down into the affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs to scoop up Democratic voters."

Gerrymandering is not a healthy practice. “Partisan gerrymandering leads to dysfunction, polarization, and the legitimate belief held by average Americans that, for them, our political system just does not work,” says former attorney general Eric Holder. “Regardless of party affiliation, that's not good for our democracy.”

They removed the campus from the 12th District and cut the campus in half, placing students into Districts 6 and 13, which were predominantly white.

He found that “over this period as a whole, the typical plan was fairly balanced and neither party enjoyed a systemic advantage"’ while “plans in effect [in 2012 were] the most extreme gerrymanders in modern history.”

“It’s easier than ever to create skewed maps,” says Michael Li, a redistricting expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “There’s much more robust data and sophisticated technology than there used to be. Gerrymandering was once an art. Now it’s a science.”

“It’s easier than ever to create skewed maps,” says Michael Li, a redistricting expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “There’s much more robust data and sophisticated technology than there used to be. Gerrymandering was once an art. Now it’s a science.”

"Today, most [districts] are simple and uncontroversial, chunky and geometric, and usually conform to the vague borders of some geographic/civic region knowable to the average citizen who lives there," wrote J. J. McCullough, a political commentator in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In a scathing dissent to the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan called partisan gerrymandering "anti-democratic in the most profound sense" and said the practice "debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people."

In a scathing dissent to the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan called partisan gerrymandering "anti-democratic in the most profound sense" and said the practice "debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people."

In a scathing dissent to the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan called partisan gerrymandering "anti-democratic in the most profound sense" and said the practice "debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people."

In a scathing dissent to the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan called partisan gerrymandering "anti-democratic in the most profound sense" and said the practice "debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people."

A study of voting maps conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice found that maps drawn by independent commissions exhibit much lower levels of partisan bias.

The commissioners voted unanimously to endorse an independent commission to draw district lines.

You may also be able to go around politicians and straight to other citizens by placing a referendum on a statewide ballot.

In September 2014, a group of citizens in Maryland walked, ran, cycled, and boated the 225 miles across Maryland’s District 3 to demonstrate that voting districts are not supposed to be, as one judge put it, “reminiscent of a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”

In September 2014, a group of citizens in Maryland walked, ran, cycled, and boated the 225 miles across Maryland’s District 3 to demonstrate that voting districts are not supposed to be, as one judge put it, “reminiscent of a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”

[Gerrymandering] is cancerous, undermining the fundamental tenets of our form of democracy.
—Federal judge Paul Niemeyer, appointed by President George H.W. Bush (R)

Congressional representation should not be a political blood sport that protects incumbents, disenfranchises legitimate interests, and allows people to achieve with surgical reappointment what they couldn't do honestly at the ballot box.

As Hamilton wrote in Federalist paper No. 22, “Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina."

"...Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.”

Senators use this threat of endless debate, called a filibuster, to make it really hard to pass legislation, even popular legislation.

Changing the composition of the Senate requires not only a constitutional amendment—but also for every single state to agree. That’s because Article V of the Constitution reads that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”