Gerrymandering should remain legal in the United States

First, my opponent suggested that anybody could use gerrymandering to their advantage, however this is not the case. Whoever is in power at the time is the party that benefits from gerrymandering(as it's the party in power that sets up the districts), and when redistricting occurred after the 2010 census, the republicans had control of the house of representatives. In a study conducted by Princeton university, it was found that 6 of the 9 worst cases for states that have gerrymandered districts were republican controlled or determined by republicans, 2 were bipartisan or neutral, and only one was controlled or determined by democrats.[1] Over all, of the ones that were republican controlled, a total of 13 extra districts had a republican take control of the seat in comparison to what the popular vote of the whole state would have done. In other words, they got 13 extra seats from gerrymandering that they wouldn't have had if the districts were made to represent the people properly. [1] In comparison, the democratic controlled ones only saw 1 extra seat that is controlled by a democrat that shouldn't be if gerrymandering didn't exist. [1] Gerrymandering, in this case, clearly benefits the republicans the most. So, if we subtract one from 13, that means the republicans have an extra 12 seats, and those would normally be democrat. That is a 24 seat swing, and that is only from the 9 worst cases of gerrymandering. There are other cases as well, and the house would be democrat-controlled if it was properly representing the people, but it is not. In addition, when you look at the house of representatives, the percent of people who voted for a democrat in the entire country was 50.4%, yet the republicans are the ones who control the house.[1] This was made possible through gerrymandering districts where all the democrats are in one district and/or a very small majority of republicans are in another. So, this indicates that gerrymandering does limit democracy, since if the house of representatives was democratic(not the party but I mean democratic as in representing the people) it would have a democratic party majority, but it doesn't. Furthermore, 57% of Americans want a third party to step up[2] and a plurality(42%) don't identify with the republican or democratic parties[3]. Though gerrymandering clearly benefits the republicans the most, it does also benefit to some extent, both of the major two parties. If it didn't, 42% of representatives would be neither republican nor democrat. I admit there are other reasons why we have almost no independent or third party representatives, and one other reason is that we don't have ranked preference voting, but gerrymandering certainly worsens this fact as well. If we were truly democratic, 42% of the house of representatives would not be republican or democrat. Now, while there is nothing in the constitution that specifically forbids gerrymandering, recently a federal court ruled gerrymandering unconstitutional in Wisconsin in that it "violated both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it aimed to deprive Democratic voters of their right to be represented." [4] Basically it can be argued that gerrymandering does violate the first amendment, which gives us a right to freedom of speech and the 14th amendment which gives us equal protection under the law. And, this was clearly the case since in Wisconsin, 50.8% of the people voted for a democrat, but 5 of the 8 of the representatives there are republican. [1] Pennsylvania is perhaps even worse since 50.7% of the people there voted for democrats, yet 13 out of the 18 representatives are republican.[1] Finally, only 40% of Americans approve the job their own representative is doing, while 48% disapprove[5]. This is further indication that the house of representatives doesn't actually represent the people, and it can be argued that gerrymandering is contributing to this as shown above. Again, I admit there are other reasons for these statistics, but it can be logically concluded that gerrymandering is contributing to this. Sources: [1] http://election.princeton.edu... [2] http://www.gallup.com... [3] http://www.gallup.com... [4] http://www.nytimes.com... [5] http://www.people-press.org...