Gerrymandering Research Paper

America historically has stood for freedom and democracy. America is a democratic republic, which means the people vote for people to make decisions on their behalf; however, American democracy is not perfect. With the proper knowledge it is easy and legal for someone to turn the tides in politics towards their own favor or towards their political party’s favor. The two most common ways are to gerrymander and to manipulate the electoral college system. By knowing how the election laws work there are ways to legally and publicly win elections with a minority of the vote.

The first and most common way is to gerrymander. Gerrymandering is defined as “[to] manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.” ("Dictionary.com"). There has been much opposition to gerrymandering however, no law has ever been introduced to abolish this practice. While some cases have gone to the supreme court and the court ruled against a specific gerrymandered district (“Arizona State Legislator”), as long as one can intelligently redraw districts to favor

Electoral votes are portioned out by adding the number of senate members to the number of house members. This gives smaller states a huge advantage because the number of house members is based on population; meaning, small states who only have one house member about triple the voting power of the individuals that inhabit that state. An example is Wyoming only has one house member, so when the two senate members are added Wyoming’s voting power increases three fold. California, on the other hand, has 53 house members. When the two senate members are added then California’s voting power only increases by less than four percent. Using this knowledge, one realizes in order to cheat the electoral college one must win over smaller states that have way more voting power rather than large states who have less voting power per