Just Another Example of Abuse of Power

“…Democrats are under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election. The way Republicans pulled that off was to draw some really, really funky-looking Congressional districts.”

Christopher Ingranham

America’s Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts

Gerrymandering allows politicians to effect the outcome of the elections. The impact of Gerrymandering is to such an extent that in the 2012 election republicans were able to win 18 more seats than democrats, even though the democrats actually earned about one million more votes than the republicans. Political parties draw the boundaries of congressional districts to increase the likelihood of election outcomes that better suit the party. Considering that we live in a country where the elected officials are there to represent us and not themselves or their party, I find no logical explanation as to why political parties have been permitted to exercise so much control over the outcome of elections.

While reading this I realized that gerrymandering has very similar negative effects of the electoral process. In both processes, the voters are left with elected officials that do not accurately represent the population but rather the interest of political parties. When looking at some of the shapes of the most gerrymandered districts I feel like I’m looking through the drawings of year old and who claims to have drawn a dog by scribbling senselessly without any real clue as to how to draw a dog. In this case though, the politicians claimed to have drawn congressional districts but really they just drew a bunch of weird shaped that lead to under-representation of a million voters. As voters, we should demand that politicians draw reasonable congressional lines to ensure that everyone’ vote matters and that the people decide who represents them, and not elected officials themselves.