National Voter Corps
Every voter counts and every vote is counted!
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National Voter Corps
Every voter counts and every vote is counted!
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What is gerrymandering? It’s drawing voting districts to favor the politicians who determine the boundaries. The term is named for the “Gerrymander” cartoon published by the Boston Gazette in 1812 after Massachusetts Gov. Gerry drew voting districts vaguely shaped like a salamander.
After the National Census every 10 years, every State looks for population changes that create opportunities to redraw the boundaries of voting districts. When State Legislatures redistrict (other States employ different decision-makers, as explained below) some gerrymander to help the party in power keep or gain more seats. This is one of many reasons why State-level elections are so important. Both Democrats and Republicans gerrymander — the examples here are real.
The Brennan Center argues in The Myth of Voter Fraud and 7 Facts about Voter Fraud and Myths being spread about them that individual voter fraud is insignificant and “Voter fraud is unacceptable, but we must find solutions that address actual problems instead of imposing policies that make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.”
Why a New System?
Our current system encourages candidates to appeal to the largest block of voters in their own party during the primary election. Then candidates usually (not always!) moderate their messaging to gain enough votes from members of the opposing party to win the general election.
The results often are not pretty, especially if a third-party “spoiler” candidate takes enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election in favor of the leading rival. The difficulty for minority and third-party candidates (actually any candidate not extremely well-funded) to get serious attention also adds to the search for a fairer way to conduct elections. Among the alternatives we’ll look at here are the leader, Rank Choice Voting (RCV), and Approval Voting, a simpler version of RCV. Continue reading.
The Constitution allotted Electoral College votes to each State based on the number of representatives each has in the House plus their two Senators. That formula hasn’t changed since 1789, but many processes have. Continue reading.
Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life by the President. John Paul Stevens served for 34 years when he retired at the age of 90. Steven Breyer retired in 2022 after serving 27 years on the Court; he was 83 years old. Ruth Bader Ginsberg had also served 27 years when she died in office at 87 just two months before the 2020 election. The current Justices’ tenures range from one year (Ketanji Brown Jackson) to 31 years (Clarence Thomas), and ages range from 51 (Amy Coney Barrett) to 74 (Clarence Thomas).
While some people believe that a court where every judge is over 50 does not represent the American population (median age is about 39), the bigger concern is their recent decisions do not reflect the values of the majority of Americans, including on voting rights. Why not?
Hint: Food, Friends & Saturday off.
At a recent college reunion, one of the attendees described visiting her son and grandchildren in Australia at the time an election was held. As election day approached, her family enthusiastically called friends to meet at a polling place which offered their favorite foods.
What!? Choose your own polling place? Food? To paraphrase Dorothy, “I guess I’m not in Georgia anymore.”
Continue reading.
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