The Pros And Cons Of Gerrymandering

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The video explains what gerrymandering is and how it works using examples from the animal kingdom. It starts by showing a new government that is a democracy and has a legislative branch. In this system each citizen gets one vote and they are split up into ranges and each range will elect one representative. These ranges stay in place until a census taker comes along and notices that the population has moved and grown, this mean that the ranges boundaries must be redrawn. The representatives hire a consultant to help redraw boundary lines, this is where the trouble begins. These consultants can redraw boundaries anyway that they like, so they are then bribed to draw the lines to favor one candidate. Doing this can have one party have a majority win and then the majority of one party will take up the council, so they can then have more control in the council. Redrawing of the lines can have a representative win more seats without any voters switching allegiance. This is gerrymandering, the intentional changing of electoral boundaries for one’s benefit. Gerrymandering can make representatives favored by minority voters, be the majority of the council. The consultant can take the exact same voters and have either party win the election. When …show more content…
The ACLU document was interesting because it answers all of the most asked questions about redistricting in one accessible place and which is easy to understand. This is not always the case when it comes to government. What I found interesting about the article is that there are ways to show to a judge or jury that the gerrymandering is wrong by using mathematics, instead of just using common sense. It is interesting that there is a concrete way of proving that gerrymandering can be wrong, so that others cannot argue against