gerrymandering?

Question

explain how gerrymandering is a civil rights issue.

Answer 1

Gerrymandering, is the purposeful drawing of legislative districts to include certain subgroups.

It is not always a civil rights issue, sometimes districts are gerrymandered to address civil rights issues.

An example of Gerrymandering would be.

You have a metro area with African Americans in the center, surrounded by white suburbs.

You can switch the racial makeup for party make up also.

Then if you form the legislative districts like wedges in a pie, where each included a small section of the center.

That would tend to dilute the voting strength of the citizens living in the metro center.

Where a more normal legislative district, would have the metro center, itself be a voting district.

What the party that is in power in the state attempts to do, is to maximize the number of districts that they will have a overwhelming majority in, while at the same time, trying to dilute the voting power of the minority party.

Most people think legislative districts should be round, square, etc or follow natural boundaries , such as counties.

When districts are gerrymandered, you might see a legislative district thats a hundred miles long and only a couple miles wide at points.

They are not based on common interest of the citizens, but purely on the party representation that they include.

Below is a picture of a gerrymandered district that was printed in a newspaper in 1812.

Notice the wierd shape.

Answer 2

Gerrymandering is to manipulate unfairly so as to gain advantage, such as establishing voting district boundaries. Example: Large city has one senator. All the towns surrounding that city have but one senator. So the city carries equal weight even though the total population of the towns exceed that of the city.Voting districts in CT are gerrymandered.City is blackdominated, Towns are white dominated. Civil rights issue.

Answer 3

Poop