Gerrymandering Should Be Eliminated

I"d like to start with a few definitions: Gerrymander-to manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class. Partisan gerrymandering makes the distribution of voters more consequential than their raw number, resulting in wasted votes. Redistricting-Redistricting is the process of drawing United States electoral district boundaries, often in response to population changes determined by the results of the decennial census. Packing-to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts. Cracking-involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district. First, it's important to understand that there are two main types of gerrymandering, packing and cracking. Packing involves the concentration of voters to reduce their influence in other districts; so, for example, Democrats might gerrymander to group together as many republicans as possible so as to win the remaining districts. Cracking is when voters of one party are spread out to eliminate a large concentration of votes. So, Republicans might gerrymander to spread out the democratic voting base to reduce their impact. Further, there is a difference between gerrymandering and redistricting. While redistricting may be inherent to gerrymandering, gerrymandering is NOT inherent to redistricting. It is entirely possible to have unbiased redistricting while eliminating gerrymandering altogether. To respond to my opponent"s first point, he argues that gerrymandering "allows officials to more effectively represent the interests of their constituency. " This is true to the extent that you seem to be under the assumption that gerrymandering only involves the packing of votes. If cracking is used instead, you have largely proportional constituencies of voters in which the dominant party carefully calculates it's advantage to make it close, but to still take the vote. It is true that they are more effectively representing the views of their party, if in an unfair, arguably illegal way that reduces the voice of the other party. Now for my opponent's second point, that being "Gerrymandering will allow the legislature to be more accurate of how the citizens feel. " This is patently false; inherent to gerrymandering is one party taking unfair advantage over the other to favor their party. First, when a party gerrymanders, it is not done through a bi-partisan committee-it's done by party members of the dominant party exclusively. This means they have complete control of the process. Bi-partisan committees are only involved when redistricting takes place; in this case, the dominant party has complete control over the outcome of the district lines. This said, the purpose of gerrymandering is to influence the overall vote to favor one's own party, meaning that even if one party garners more votes, the opposing party might still win more seats. A perfect example of this is the great gerrymander of 2012. Despite the Democrats receiving 1.4 million votes more than the Republicans for the House of Representatives, the Republicans still came out top with 234 seats to 201 [1]. How is this possible? Gerrymandering. If you look closely, the Republican State Leadership Committee published a strategy which involves taking over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redrawing state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages, a plan which has proven extremely effective. Essentially what gerrymandering accomplishes is the wasting of 'enemy' votes. In seven states where Republican legislators redrew districts, packing effectively wasted 1.7 million Democrat votes. Likewise, in Illinois, Democratic gerrymandering wasted 70,000 Republican votes. Interestingly enough, the only state where the proportion of votes matches exactly the number of seats won by each party is California, where Democrats took 62% of the vote and won 38 of 53 seats [1]. Even more interesting is the fact that California effectively eliminated the ability of legislators to gerrymander by creating California Citizens' Redistricting Commission [2]. What does this tell us? Gerrymandering actually DOESN'T mean the legislators are more accurate of how the citizens feel; it means the legislators more accurately represent their own political leanings by unfairly eliminating the votes of opposition party members. I think it's fairly clear why we should eliminate gerrymandering; it allows the dominant political parties to unfairly bias elections by wasting the votes of opposition party members. In fact, in a poll conducted in 2014 in New York in which people responded to the question "Should the redrawing of Congressional districts be controlled by an independent, non-partisan commission? " on voting ballots, 86% responded with a resounding "Yes" [3]. It would be quite easy to eliminate the legislator's ability to gerrymander and instead follow California's lead by creating a commission of citizens tasked with the responsibilities of redistricting. This could even be an additional duty assigned to the Supreme Court in each state. However, clearly something needs to be changed. If we took a look at the mass scale of gerrymandering taking place in the US and the grand total of votes wasted in any given election, the number would dwarf the likely effects of both voter-ID laws (a Democratic concern) and of voter fraud (a Republican concern). Thus, this should be a prime concern for both major parties. In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was unconstitutional; however, they set such a high standard of proof that it is extremely difficult to make a legal challenge of such redistricting procedures [4]. Sources: [1] . http://www.nytimes.com...; [2] . http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov... [3] . http://www.isidewith.com... [4] . http://www.propublica.org...