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Topic: Gerrymandering

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	Racial Gerrymandering is Unconstitutional According to the Supreme Court.
		Gerrymandering is the process of creating electoral districts in a manner which gives the dominant political party greater influence in elections.
		However, by the time of the 1985 Supreme Court decision against political gerrymandering, the over-zealous affirmative action supporters had managed to entrench a tradition of racial gerrymandering which allowed electoral districts to be redrawn into bizarre shapes in order to create districts with a majority of minorities.
		The underpinnings of "racial test gerrymandering" are based in the assumption that any test that excludes an individual based on literacy, school learning, cognitive skills, reasoning skills, mathematics, written communications, or academic achievement is inherently biased against certain racial groups.
	www.adversity.net /special/gerrymander.htm (1288 words)

	Gerrymandering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Gerrymandering is a controversial form of redistricting in which electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for an electoral advantage.
		Gerrymandering may be used to advantage or disadvantage particular constituents, such as members of a racial, linguistic, religious or class group, often in the favor of ruling incumbents or a specific political party.
		Gerrymandering is most common in countries such as the United States of America where elected politicians are responsible for drawing districts (with the exception of the state of Iowa).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Gerrymandering (4919 words)

	Gerrymandering - dKosopedia
		Gerrymandering is the typically act of dividing electoral districts or altering existing electoral district boundaries for the political advantage of a political party, social group, policy position, or incumbent office holders.
		Gerrymandering produces states where the majority party elects all, or nearly all, of the representatives to Congress, such as in Massachussetts where the entire congressional delegation is composed of Democrats.
		Gerrymandering is also an issue of contention among voting blocs, who often disproportionately support one party, but are divided up to provide a "base" of support in several districts, but not being able to send one of their own members to the final legislature.
	www.dkosopedia.com /wiki/Gerrymandering (534 words)

	Partisan Gerrymandering: Harms and a New Solution - by Daniel D. Polsby and Robert D. Popper - The Heartland Institute
		Bandemer that claims of partisan gerrymandering are justiciable as violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
		The Court chose to emphasize impact over intent, requiring that a gerrymander case be evaluated on the basis of harm to an excluded group's "opportunity to participate" in the political process as a whole.
		Gerrymandering is, after all, a pathology of democratic government.
	www.heartland.org /Article.cfm?artId=83 (1814 words)

	Fighting Gerrymandering
		Gerrymandering is the art of drawing single-seat districts so that one party's voting strength is used more efficiently than a rival's.
		Thus, gerrymandering can most undemocratically enable a simple majority to arrogate to itself new powers that only a supermajority (or virtual consensus) of the people should properly be allowed to grant.
		If voters were freed to express their complex maze of interlocking interests, then gerrymandering would become impossible to analyze for more than one issue or theme at a time (if that).
	jeffryfisher.net /statesman/ElectionLaw/Gerrymander.htm (1706 words)

	How Proportional Representation Would Finally Solve Our Redistricting and Gerrymandering Problems
		The two main purposes of gerrymandering are to protect the seats of incumbents and to allow the dominant party in a state to win more seats that it deserves.
		In partisan gerrymandering, the dominant party in a state draws the district lines in an effort to get the other major party to waste as many of its votes as possible and thus to not be able to elect its fair share of legislative seats.
		Assume that gerrymandering creates a safe district packed with Democratic voters and the Democratic candidate is elected with 70 percent of the vote to 30 percent for the Republican.
	www.mtholyoke.edu /acad/polit/damy/articles/redistricting.htm (5113 words)

	Calpundit: Gerrymandering (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Gerrymandering is a problem as long as seats are allocated geographically, but that geography is not required by the Constitution or fairness.
		Gerrymandering for maximum partisan advantage is the exception rather than the rule; usually, gerrymandering is done more to preserve safe seats, which is in direct opposition to maximizing the number seats with a favorable tilt toward the majority party.
		This seems based on the mistaken idea that gerrymandering is principally done for partisan advantage rather than incumbent protection, and furthermore that the federal government is somehow less likely to have the kind of majority/minority polarization that allegedly prevents compromise on the issue in the states.
	www.calpundit.com /archives/003330.html (8058 words)

	Fraud Factor - Redistricting, Gerrymander, Gerrymandering, Reapportionment, and Election Fraud (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Gerrymandering is the drawing of election district boundary lines for partisan advantage, to favor the majority party and incumbent politicians of all political parties.
		Gerrymandering is the equivalent of legally stealing an election by stuffing the ballot box with fraudulent ballots voted for the incumbent or removing legitimate ballots voted for the challengers before they are counted.
		Gerrymandering is the legal equivalent of stealing an election by stuffing the ballot box with a sufficiently large number of fraudulent ballots voted for the incumbent, or by removing a sufficiently large number of legitimate ballots voted for the challengers before they are counted.
	www.fraudfactor.com /ffgerrymander.html (14064 words)

	Gerrymandering - SourceWatch (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Over the years, partisan gerrymandering has become the norm - traditional spoils for the party which wins control in a state, and then tries to design congressional districts that send the maximum number of its own to Washington.
		The big threat to an incumbent is often no longer in the general election (81 of the 435 Congressmen ran unopposed in 2002) but at a primary, where radical activists dominate.
		The court ruled on four issues: whether Texas could redistrict mid-decade; whether the plan discriminated on the basis of race; whether it was an unconstitutional gerrymander; and whether it diluted the voting strengths of minorities.
	www.sourcewatch.org /index.php?title=Gerrymandering (484 words)

	Anti-gerrymandering formulae \| Brad Ideas
		Attempts to stop gerrymandering will face strong opposition from the powerful figures who created it in the first place.
		And indeed, whatever gerrymandering can be done will be done so this deserves more thought.
		Gerrymandering is an embarrassment for any country which calls itself democratic.
	ideas.4brad.com /anti-gerrymandering-formulae (1562 words)

	What is gerrymandering (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Gerrymandering is a term that describes the deliberate rearrangement of the boundaries of congressional districts to influence the outcome of elections.
		The original gerrymander was created in 1812 by Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, who crafted a district for political purposes that looked like a salamander.
		The purpose of gerrymandering is to either concentrate opposition votes into a few districts to gain more seats for the majority in surrounding districts (called packing), or to diffuse minority strength across many districts (called dilution).
	www.fairvote.org /redistricting/gerrymandering.htm (156 words)

	gerrymander. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
		A gerrymander sounds like a strange political beast, which it is, considered from a historical perspective.
		Gerry (whose name, incidentally, was pronounced with a hard g, though gerrymander is now commonly pronounced with a soft g) was immortalized in this word because an election district created by members of his party in 1812 looked like a salamander.
		According to one version of gerrymander's coining, the shape of the district attracted the eye of the painter Gilbert Stuart, who noticed it on a map in a newspaper editor's office.
	www.bartleby.com /61/62/G0106200.html (306 words)

	Racial gerrymandering Public Interest - Find Articles (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Republicans contend that racial gerrymandering had little to do with their recent electoral success, ignoring cases where it clearly made the difference.
		Democrats blame racial gerrymandering for their loss of the House, which was, however, too broad not to have had other causes.
		With the Supreme Court possibly forcing almost a dozen states to draw reapportionment plans from scratch, it is worth assessing to what extent racial gerrymandering actually has contributed to Democratic electoral losses in Congress, in the South, and in the nation as a whole.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m0377/is_n122/ai_17884705 (902 words)

	2003 Texas redistricting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		On June 28, 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the statewide redistricting as Constitutional, but struck down Congressional District 23 as racial gerrymandering in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
		After Republicans won control of the Texas state legislature in 2002, for the first time in 130 years, they set their sights on establishing a majority of House of Representatives seats held by their party.
		Democrats criticized the 2003 redistricting effort, citing the lack of precedent for redistricting twice in a decade, considering it had already been done in 2002, and argued that it was being done for purely political gain and was therefore gerrymandering.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/2003_Texas_redistricting (1165 words)

	The Washington Monthly
		The reason you have to address gerrymandering on the federal level is that state by state rule changes are the equivalent of unilateral disarmament.
		You may have perfectly legitimate reasons to dislike gerrymanders that have nothing to do with which party is benefitting, and I even believe you when you wrote that, but most of the people on this thread are objecting solely because the Democrats are presently suffering from it more.
		Probably not, since control of the House isn't the source of the power of the gerrymander; and in fact, in the 2004 election, the Democrats made gains in control of state houses that actually are the locus of power in carrying out gerrymandering.
	www.washingtonmonthly.com /archives/individual/2004_11/005118.php (14407 words)

	Legality of Gerrymandering (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Political gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral district lines in a manner that discriminates against a political party.
		This sort of gerrymandering was first used in the South after the Civil War to dilute the fl vote.
		Racial Gerrymandering II In 1982, the Voting Rights Act was amended to require many political jurisdictions to create "majority-minority" districts in order to allow more racial minorities to elect candidates of their choice.
	www.fairvote.org /redistricting/legality.htm (154 words)

	FrontPage magazine.com :: The New Gerrymandering by Lowell Ponte
		Democrats had so rigged district boundaries by gerrymandering, however, that what was a virtual tie vote nationally resulted in the election of 41 more Democrats to the lower house of Congress than Republicans — and continued Democratic monopoly control of the House of Representatives where all taxing and spending bills originate.
		Vasconcellos’ aim in gerrymandering the electorate by lowering the voting age boundary is obvious.
		This new gerrymandering could be said to include many other attempts to re-draw electoral boundaries to bring in new voters.
	www.frontpagemag.com /Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12532 (2172 words)

	Andrew Olmsted dot com: Taking on Gerrymandering
		Named for Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the less well-known founders, gerrymandering is a relatively simple process.
		Personally, what I find interesting in the discussions of gerrymandering is that people generally object to redistricting for political gain, but generally do not propose what the goals for a redistricting plan should be.
		It's a bit preposterous to suggest that a particular algorithm for redistricting (or for voting) is a solution to a particular problem in, or an improvement of a process when the goal of the process is unclear.
	andrewolmsted.com /MT/archives/000879.html (2503 words)

	Beyond gerrymandering and Texas posses: US electoral reform (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		At issue in Texas, as occurs periodically in all of the other 49 states, was a redistricting map for the election of representatives to the US Congress.
		There are, of course, greater or lesser degrees of gerrymandering, but there is no way to avoid it altogether in a winner-take-all system.
		The spectacle of a posse of Texas Rangers assigned to arrest legislators in an attempt to dragoon them into rubber-stamping a particularly egregious gerrymandering scheme is yet another embarrassment and a sure sign that electoral reform is seriously overdue.
	www.worldpolicy.org /globalrights/democracy/2003-0529-CSM-gerrymandering.html (675 words)

	USS Clueless - Gerrymandering
		The districts are gerrymandered so that three of the districts have about 55% voters for party A and 45% for party B. The remaining two districts are 100% party B. Party A would have three legislators but party B would only have 2, and A would be in control.
		Gerrymandering at the state level can and does affect the US government.
		Depending on who you listen to, either the Republican majority in the state legislature was trying to gerrymander the Democrats, or was trying to undo the previous gerrymandering that the Democrats had pulled off.
	www.denbeste.nu /cd_log_entries/2003/10/Gerrymandering.shtml (2367 words)

	SSRN-Looking for Standards (in All the Wrong Places): Partisan Gerrymandering Claims after Vieth by Richard Hasen (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Bandemer that such "partisan gerrymandering" claims were justiciable resulted in virtually no successful claims in the lower courts.
		Four Justices signed a plurality opinion stating the view that partisan gerrymandering claims should be considered nonjusticiable because of the absence of a "judicially manageable" standard for separating permissible from impermissible consideration of party affiliation of voters in the redistricting enterprise.
		Part II explains why Justice Kennedy is unlikely to find a judicially manageable standard for partisan gerrymandering in history, technology, or the First Amendment, given his rejection of vote dilution, expressive harm, conflict of interest, and improper motive tests proposed by the Vieth plaintiffs and dissenters.
	papers.ssrn.com /sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=561243 (561 words)

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