Although the electoral battle between Kamala Harris and donald trump will monopolize all the spotlights on November 5, the presidential elections They will not be the only elections in which North American citizens vote: voters are called to the polls to, in addition to electing a new president, renew the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate.
Although it may seem like a ‘minor’ issue compared to the White House, The election of 435 congressmen and around 34 senators will greatly determine the next term of Harris or Trump: at stake is control of the legislative chambers, in which specific interests from each state enter, which will allow the local vote to directly influence the action of the next government.
In those elections, less high-profile but just as important as the presidential ones, districts play a key rolethe geographical divisions that are made in the territories to group voting populations precisely, and a ‘trap’ with which the parties try to influence the electoral result: the ‘gerrymandering‘.
Redistricting is done every 10 years and is key in elections
Every 10 years, the United States adjusts its census and carries out the “redistricting“, that is, adjust the geographic areas of each state to balance the proportional representation of each of them based on their population.
Each state has the same number of districts as there are representatives in Congress, and it is generally the state authorities who are in charge of carrying out the redistricting. The objective is that, if there have been population changes or internal migrations, the districts adjust their geographic area to group populations of similar size. Redraw the district map to balance the census, in other words.
What is gerrymandering?
In the redistricting process, local authorities in charge of it may try to ‘cheat’ and deliberately manipulating the boundaries and geographic shape of districts to favor a party, social group, or ideology.
This tactic is known as ‘gerrymandering‘, in honor of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 redrawn a district with a strange, salamander-like shape. The objective: draw a district with a specific shape that would benefit his party in the elections. Gerry and’salamander‘: ‘gerrymandering‘.
Dilute or concentrate a party’s vote in the districts
Let’s imagine a state with a 50% of the population democrat and a 50% Republican populationand divided into five districts.
The party in state government, for example, the Republican party, is interested geographically dilute the Democratic vote to have as many districts as possible, so in redistricting They will try to draw the districts so that the majority of the state’s Democratic voters remain in the same territory. Democrats will win that district by a landslide, but They will lose in the other four. That first model of gerrymandering is called “cracking” or “fragmentation“: disperse the rival vote to reduce its final importance.
There is a second model, called “packing” either “concentration“: following the same example, the Republicans would redraw the districts so that in none of them the Democrats can be the majority.
A legal but very controversial manipulation
The practice of gerrymandering influences, in addition to the election of local or state governments, the appointment of the House of Representatives or the Senate, so it has effects on national politics by influencing the balances of power between Congress and the White House.
Although it is not a crime (except when it tries to segment the vote with racial criteria), the gerrymandering is a highly controversial political tactic for reinforcing polarization and distorting the proportional representation of citizens in elections.
Therefore, The courts are overseers of the process and can annul a redistricting if they detect this type of partisan practices. In fact, many states have encouraged them to be independent committees those who carry out the treaty of the states to avoid political interference and partisan manipulation.
The last redistricting In the United States it was carried out in 2021, after the 2020 census. Just one year later, in 2022, several cases of gerrymandering were detected and canceled by state supreme courts in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Maryland and New York.
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