Answer to Question #203874 in Political Science for Poonam

Question

Significance of gerrymandering in electoral process

Answer 1

Significance of Gerrymandering in electoral process

Gerrymandering is a tactic aimed to provide an unfair political benefit to a certain party or group, by modifying the borders of the seats that in post-election systems are the most used. Gerrymandering can be used to aid or impede a given demography such as a political, ethnic, linguistic, racial or class group to achieve the desired election outcomes of a specific party.

Gerrymandering aims primarily at maximising the impact of the votes of supporters and minimising the impact of the votes of opponents. The fundamental objective of a partisan gerrymander is not only to impact the district law, but also the entire corpus of legislative choices adopted, (Chen & David 2011). Because of the wasted vote impact, Gerrymandering is successful. Votes cast are those in which did not contribute to a candidate's election because they surpassed the requisite minimum to win or the candidate lost. Therefore, the incumbent party transitions regional boundaries to accommodate adversarial voters in some districts. The opposing party allowed a naked count of minorities and hence the losing candidate squandered minority votes. Other districts were created tighter. These districts constitute most districts and the result for the incumbent party is favorable, (Chen & David 2011).

A district with a higher amount of party aid may be shortened by condensing it, without unreasonably favouring a single political party, and a district with greater party support would efficiently ensure that the candidate is elected. From a governance standpoint, this may be particularly problematic, as district formation, which ensures high partisan levels, generally results in more part sanity in legislative bodies. If several districts are to be polarized, then representation of these districts is likewise likely to be partisan, thereby creating and maintaining a political impasse, (Chen & David 2011).

This indicates that the notion of democratic accountability may be deterred through gerrymandering. Uncompetitive seats/districts reduce anxiety that current politicians might lose their seats, so as to provide the support of a question as a whole even though they correspond to the majority, they are less motivated to represent the interests of their constituency. Incumbent politicians are more interested in your party than in your people' interests.

Campaign expenditures for district elections may be affected by Gerrymandering. Whenever districts are expanding, candidates must pay higher transit costs and attempt to produce and deliver campaign advertisements throughout the district. A further benefit of the incumbent's gerrymandered safe seat is the fact of obtaining campaign cash.

The gerrymandering impact is especially advantageous for incumbents since incumbents are significantly more likely to be re-elected in gerrymandering conditions. For instance, as politician Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann pointed out in 2002, just four persons could challenge the present congress of the US, the least in US history. The leaders may organize a majority party gerrymander and are generally reputed to succeed electoral officers, even the minority incubators.

Reference

Chen, Jowei,& David Cottrell ( 2011). "Evaluating partisan gains from Congressional gerrymandering: Using computer simulations to estimate the effect of gerrymandering in the US House." Electoral Studies 44 (2016): 329-340.