Summary 04-03-2013

In today’s class we discussed districting/redistricting, which is the process of dividing a state up into districts for the purpose of representation.  We saw that while all districts had to have the same population, not all districts had to be the same shape.  In order to determine how many people should be in each district you have to find the ideal district size.  You do this by taking the total population and dividing it by the number of districts that you want.  If there are 100,000 people in a district, for example, that is the number of people a representative represents.  There are four desirable features a district should have.  First, it should be contiguous.  This means that districts should be in one piece instead of scattered into a bunch of little pieces across the state.  Second, a district should be convex.  In order for a district to be convex it must have no dents in its shape.  Third, districts should respect geological boundaries.  Examples of these include rivers and mountains.  Fourth, districts should respect geopolitical boundaries such as city limits and county lines.  We also learned about gerrymandering, which is when districts are drawn up in ways that benefit a certain politician or political party.  The term was named after a New York politician named Gerry, who drew up a district in the shape of a salamander.  This act caused scandal, and a case against it was brought to the Supreme Court who did not say it was illegal, but did not approve of it either.  The Baker v. Carr case was also discussed in which residents of urban districts in Tennessee felt that their vote was being debased because rural districts with smaller populations had the same number of representatives as them.