Redistricting, also known pejoratively as gerrymandering, refers to manipulation of the redrawing of districts to skew results towards a preferred party or candidate. Ranked choice voting is a remedy to gerrymandering. An article is posted in Inside Sources by Rob Richie and David Daley discusses gerrymandering and the widely acclaimed voting method called ranked choice voting. Here is an excerpt:
Partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts has been a uniquely American problem since our founding. As long as we’ve had politicians, they’ve exploited the power to pick their own voters before the voters get to pick them.
It’s wrong, and it’s getting worse. Politicians have fancier tools and greater incentives to draw maps that advantage their side, with only five House seats separating Democrats and Republicans. More than ever, gerrymanders — crafted with sophisticated technology, powerful software, and terabytes of personal and political data — threaten the powerful ideals at the heart of our founders’ vision: Consent of the governed.
Citizens in a representative democracy must have the power to change their leaders when they so desire. But after the 2018 midterms, 59 million Americans lived in a state where a legislative chamber was controlled by a party that lost the popular vote.
Read the full article here. Also see related Democracy Chronicles articles like those on Voting Methods, Direct Democracy, and definitely checkout our main Voting Methods section.
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