Essay Sample on Gerrymandering

Politics is becoming more prevalent in today’s society more now than ever, yet one of the most corrupt, yet legal manipulations to an election is relatively lying low under the noses of the public. Gerrymandering is “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections” (1).

One of the United States’ greatest underlying societal problems is gerrymandering, a perfectly legal way to abuse the census for political gain for an election, and has a direct output of bias toward a political party, public misrepresentation, and discrimination, proving that Americans need to become more aware of this practice to put the vote back in the hands of the people.

Bias toward political parties is already a problem that has begun to rear their ugly heads in recent years, especially in the media, however gerrymandering is a practice that began years before for the same goal, and adds more fuel to the fire. Gerrymandering is the redrawing of voting districts for political gain, with data from the most recent census (ten years). These redrawn borders can either “crack” the opponents voters by spreading them across voting districts to decrease their power, or “pack” their own party supporters together to guarantee a sure victory in that district. Just recently, an article was published by CNN on a recent case of gerrymandering, where Republican party leaders used the 2020 census to reengineer the current borders to ensure progress in the House of Representatives:

“Thanks to creatively partisan drawing of congressional maps after the 2020 census, the GOP is already poised to flip multiple House seats from blue to red. An analysis by The New York Times suggests Republicans could get the five seats they need for a majority simply from redistricting…The bottom line from the Times report suggests Republicans are on the road to juicing the historical advantage enjoyed by an out-of-power party in the midterm elections.” (3)

This is a fairly obvious and not out-of-the-ordinary example of gerrymandering a congressional map in order to gain power in legislation, which is ever more important, especially when an opposing party is running the executive branch. However, this does cause an unfair bias towards the Republicans, with the example of the gain of five seats, just from redrawing borders, not to mention the possible outcome of a midterm election with these changed borders. This party bias through gerrymandering can unfortunately cause more problems than needed in the communication in our government, with a blue executive branch, and a possible red legislative branch, could be bad news for the “getting things done” and the agreement between the leaders and prominent figures of our nation. However, the other issues of gerrymandering are not always as obviously reported on as the congressional representation, but can affect smaller elections, from local to state.