Politics seems to have its own brand of cartography that involves the political districting and redistricting of congressional voting districts. This is often called gerrymandering and it is the process in which a voting district is broken up or the physical boundaries of a voting district are changed in order to make it easier for one political party to win future elections. Below are a few examples of gerrymandered voting district maps:
They each show that areas in which the winning party’s constituency is most heavily concentrated get drawn into that party’s district hoping to ensure that party will carry (win) that district in upcoming elections. This can be seen most clearly in the second image. Only certian counties were drawn into the district. This process makes it very difficult for a new party to win in a gerrymandered district, but every so often a new party does win and they redraw, or gerrymander, new districts. In some cases the redrawn boundaries are so specific that they only include certain addresses on a given street. So, if on Elm St., heavily conservative, Republicans live at 2100, 2160, 3300, 3410,…, then only those addresses would be included in a district gerrymandered by a conservative, Republican winning candidate. Gerrymandering is part of the reason that local politics seem so ingrained into a region.
They each show that areas in which the winning party’s constituency is most heavily concentrated get drawn into that party’s district hoping to ensure that party will carry (win) that district in upcoming elections. This can be seen most clearly in the second image. Only certian counties were drawn into the district. This process makes it very difficult for a new party to win in a gerrymandered district, but every so often a new party does win and they redraw, or gerrymander, new districts. In some cases the redrawn boundaries are so specific that they only include certain addresses on a given street. So, if on Elm St., heavily conservative, Republicans live at 2100, 2160, 3300, 3410,…, then only those addresses would be included in a district gerrymandered by a conservative, Republican winning candidate. Gerrymandering is part of the reason that local politics seem so ingrained into a region.
No comments:
Post a Comment