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The Voter’s Speakeasy featuring unbiased reporting and insight into life at Vote Smart from our staff, interns, and volunteers.

Redistricting: The 10-year shake up

2011 December 07

By Chris Copsey, Legislative Research Director 

This last year has seen its fair share of controversial issues come up for discussion including unemployment, immigration, and health care, but there is one issue that only pops up every decade with noticeable consequences, and that issue is redistricting.

Redistricting defined is the redrawing of representational districts for the states. To break it down even further, every 10 years, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, the United States Census is taken. Once everyone has been counted, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives informs each state how many representatives to Congress they will have. If the population of that state increased in the last 10 years, then they may receive additional representatives. If the population went down, however, they could lose representatives. If there is any change in the amount of representatives that a state has, the state’s legislature will redraw the Congressional districts, thus the term redistricting. Sounds pretty straight forward, right? Wrong.

That’s all well and good, but there have been problems. Most notably, is what is called a Gerrymander, or a district that has been purposely manipulated in order to favor the candidate of one particular political party. The phrase is named after Eldbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts in the early 1800’s. When he was running for governor, the Massachusetts legislature redrew the districts to favor the Democratic-Republicans, Gerry’s political party. What that means, is that the political ideology of a majority of the people in the district were drastically slanted towards one party, therefore making ...

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Find your Political Soulmate with VoteEasy

2011 November 04

With the presidential election exactly one year away, Project Vote Smart has launched VoteEasy (winner of the best there is at the 2011 Webvisionary Awards), the interactive tool for voters to instantly see which presidential candidate they are most compatible with. To use VoteEasy now visit www.votesmart.org.

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