American Politics

Patrick Kern

Professor Goergen

Portfolio Assignment #4

According to my textbook AM GOV, redistricting is the practice of drawing congressional district boundaries to accord with population changes. I played the Re-Districting game online and the first thing that came to my mind was the fact that the actual process of redistricting seemed pretty manipulative. I returned to my textbook, and low and behold I read of the term, "gerrymander."

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing congressional boundaries to the advantage of one party. This term comes from the elections of 1812 in Massachusetts where Governor Elbridge Gerry created a district that favored Republicans over Federalists. The odd shape of the district inspired a cartoonist to depict it as a creature the resembled a salamander and thus the term gerrymander was born.

The game itself consists of five missions. Mission one is called, Fundamentals, mission two is called Partisan Gerrymander, mission three is called Bipartisan Gerrymander, mission four is called Voting Rights Act, and mission five is called Reform.

Mission one teaches you the basics. I learned that once the districts have been drawn up, they must pass through a few steps before they are accepted. For example, after the districts have been drawn and the population goals are met the state legislature must vote and pass the plan. Next the plan moves on to the state governor who must sign off. Finally, there are detractors who may sue you in state courts. There is really no way to know how the courts will rule, and if any of the suits are upheld by the court your plan will not pass and you must return to redraw and try to fix whatever needs to be changed. For example, your plan may not meet the compactness law, and it is up to you to figure out how to make the populations work and still stay within the framework of the compactness law. The final step in the state court is by far the most difficult step to pass.

In mission two you get in touch with a partisan gerrymander, from which I described above. The essence of a partisan gerrymander is manipulating district lines around a set of voters that will elect your party's candidate. According to the game, a partisan gerrymander is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and it is a surprisingly common one. Even if the district's shape does not look as strange as the first gerrymander, its population can still be engineered to elect a specific kind of politician. With the advent of computer technology, mapmakers can reliably predict the future voting behavior of any potential group. Nevertheless, gerrymandering remains a staple of partisan conflict between parties, and unscrupulous mapmakers continue to use it despite the harm it does to fair representation.

In mission three we come across bipartisan gerrymandering. The bipartisan gerrymander is a different form of the partisan gerrymander. Rather than trying to twist the opposing party's incumbents out of office, the political parties strike a bargain in order to maintain the status quo. The parties cooperate to protect all existing incumbents and to preserve their traditional constituencies.

Mission Four is about the gains made in redistricting fairness by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its later amendments. This makes sure specific cultures or groups are not squeezed out of voting districts. The law guarantees a norm of fair play to racial communities of interest that have been denied political power in the past. In mission four, drawing districts that reflect minority political power can have partisan consequences, such as packing a district with a predominant party.

Mission five of the Redistricting Game is about the reform proposal put forward by U.S. Representative John Tanner. "The proposed bill restricts the mapmaker's ability to use partisan and demographic information as to draw congressional districts." The "Fair Act" as it is called, "seeks to eliminate the problems with partisan bickering and manipulation that often surrounds the current process of redistricting. By creating independent oversight in each state and limiting the factors that can be considered in drawing lines, the Tanner Proposal seek to make a more fair redistricting process for the entire country."

http://www.redistrictinggame.org/ http://www.redistrictinggame.org/