Unconstitutional Gerry Part II: The Mandering

As mentioned in my previous blog, Gerrymandering has become a plague upon our democracy. Gerrymandering is the process of redrawing districts to dilute or completely eliminate certain groups of voters (usually minorities). This process is generally used to secure wins for representatives in the House or State legislative seats and make it impossible for the opposing parties to ever win in said districts. As I argued in my previous post, Gerrymandering fundamentally intrudes upon our rights given by the 15th Amendment, and should thus be considered unconstitutional.

In order to eliminate Gerrymandering, districts must be redrawn impartially. There are numerous ways to do this, probably the fastest and most appealing though would be the Split Line Method. This method solves the problem of districts drawn by partisan bias while also maintaining equal districts in terms of population.

Implementation of the Split Line Method would be fairly simple with a state by state approach (each state doing it themselves). Each state would use the algorithm to divide their populations equally by the approximate population of the least populous state. Populations would be kept together (as in populations within counties would stay within counties instead of spreading out across a state [I'm looking at you Texas]) and each district will remain as is with 1 representative per district.

There is no good reason this can't be done, just an unwillingness to do so. With those in power benefiting from such an unreasonable method of representation, it comes to us, the people, to create pressure and make a meaningful change to this system.