Reapportionment is a necessary process in state legislature in other to ensure people roughly equal representation in state legislature. After every national census, reapportionment needs to happen before the next election cycle. This happens so that every assembly, congressional and senate districts have roughly the same population in respected houses. The court believes that reapportionment help to prevent political oppression to those who are underrepresented, however, in practice reapportionment often is influenced by party interest.
The main reason why state legislatures need to reapportion the districts is because the population changes over time. The population can change because of migration or other external factors that slow down
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In some states, including Wisconsin, redistricting is regarded as a law that the legislation passes, which fulfill the national and state principle of redistricting, and the governor will decide to sign or veto the bill. If a person coming from an underrepresented district brings suit to the court, the court will be the one who do the redistricting, but the redistricting made by the court can result in putting two officials in the same district. The third way for reapportionment is to establish a special commission. Depending on the states, the special commission can be appointed by the governor or the legislature or is chosen from a panel of candidates or is elected in a nonpartisan ballot. The reason behind this process is to reduce the partisanship in redistricting to ensure some level of …show more content…
This does not mean that every district has the same number of people. For example, Wisconsin have 8 congressional districts, 33 senate districts, and 99 assembly districts. Then, each of the 8 congressional districts have to have roughly the same number of people as each other, and each of the 33 senate districts have to have roughly the same population, and so on. According to the Wisconsin Constitution, there are some additional rules on reapportionment. The assembly district cannot be divided in the formation of the senate district. That is, the senate district needs to have a full number of assembly districts. In Wisconsin, the ratio is usually three assembly districts to one senate district. The districts need to be as compact as possible, as in the area of the district should be as close together as possible and not spread out in order to prevent political gerrymandering. Lastly, the redistricting needs to rely on previous political divisions such as town and
A proportionate electoral system (otherwise known as proportional representation or PR) grants its voters a voice in their vote. The way that the PR system works is that for every percentage of votes a party receives, they will be granted around the same percentage of seats in parliament. For example, if a party receives 35% of the votes, they would receive 35% of the seats in legislature. This is important for Canada because it gives smaller parties a better chance of retaining a seat. There are many different varieties of PR, due to the fact that at often times, the voting percentages do not evenly translate into the number of seats available (King, 2000). For instance, if a party receive 33.6% of the vote, they can’ receive 33.6% of seats. Because of this, numerous variations of the PR system have been created. The most common...
For weeks convention delegates have been argued over representation in congress, Large States want it based on population. Small states want each states to have the same number of votes. representative s shall be apportioned according to population. The number of shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one representatives. This piece of evidence relates to the argument because they said that big states has more power than small states that is why big states only need one representative.
At the convention, the founders were debating about how many representatives in the Congress should each state allowed to have. For example, James Madison, who came from Virginia, one of the larger states, suggested that representation should be proportional to the state’s population (Hart et al. 109-110). Coming from a state with larger population had influenced Madison’s proposal, for he reasoned that since Virginia has a large population of people, so more representatives are needed to represent more people. However, the states with a smaller population disagreed with this proposal and came up with a proposal that would counter Madison’s proposal. Paterson, who came from New Jersey, one of those states with smaller population, proposed a plan in which equal number of people should be elected from each state for representation in the Congress (Hart et al. 109-110). It was evident to see how coming from a smaller state had affected Paterson’s proposal, for he feared
In this essay I will argue that British General Elections should be conducted using a system of Proportional Representation. First, I will argue that the system would be more democratic as every vote that is cast would be represented and this ...
The Connecticut Compromise resolved this issue by forming the two houses that we have today. In one house, the Senate, every state is represented equally regardless of population. In the lower house, the House of Representatives each state receives one representative for a set number of people. This satisfied all of the states and helped resolve one of the greatest conflicts while writing the Constitution. Another conflict that arose was with the counting of slaves in the census used to set the number of representatives per state. This was resolved under the Three-Fifths Compromise which stated that every slave would be counted as 3/5 of a person, although these slaves were given no voice or rights.
If you have ever seen the 435 congressional districts on a map you would probably think to yourself that it resembles something similar to one giant jigsaw puzzle. These districts vary in size and certainly in shape. Unlike how county lines are decided within states, the congressional districts change every ten years after the Census is released. Why do they have to change exactly? Well, the answer to that question receives the same frustrating answer heard again and again: It’s politics. The official name for the act of changing congressional lines to benefit a political party is “gerrymandering.” It has been the cause of many debates as well as many negative effects. Gerrymandering has had an unfair advantage in politics throughout history, as it has tarnished the system and should be changed.
Redistricting is the legislative political process of redrawing the geographic boundaries of congressional district based on population following the decennial census. Each state is obligated to adhere to certain Supreme Court requirements regarding redistricting. Respective districts within a state should ensure population equality, contiguity, compactness and no discrimination against minority. Districts can be drawn to protect incumbents. The process of deliberately modifying districts in order to increase the partisan advantage of a particular political party is called gerrymandering.
When gerrymandering occurs, a political party draws the boundaries of an electoral district in a way that helps their party win elections over the other parties. For example, if a Republican controls a state, and it appears like the party will lose a seat in the future, the Republicans will draw the district in a way to exclude as many Democratic voters as possible. Perhaps they will do this by removing a democratic stronghold from one district and adding it to another district that will either easily go Republican or will have a Democratic representative no matter what happens. Before 1964, the majority party could draw districts in any way they wanted to, and chaos ensued. Consequently, in 1964, the U.S Supreme Court legislated that the districts “had to contain equal population, and be as compact as possible” (“Gerrymandering”). Every ten years the U.S. issues a census to determine the population of each state. After this, each state receives their share of the 435 seats, and then the state gets to break the population into the corresponding number of districts. This whole process, known as reapportionment, takes weeks to determine, and in many cases, courts must determine the shape and area of each district. Even though the districts must contain equal population, gerry...
At first, I thought that just splitting up the population into districts with relatively square shaped would be the correct way to make the candidates happy. I attempted to make their houses the center of the district and expanded from there until I got the population equal. Voters in states like Idaho wouldn’t benefit from this. There are other problems when it comes to gerrymandering. While a candidate from the majority party has the advantage, it doesn’t allow for a third party candidate to have as much of a chance.
There are quite a few problems that come with any form of representation. Problems such as how to give the voters a specific person to whom they can address their concerns, protecting voters from being too heavily influenced by big parties, ensuring voters can talk to a representative who can address concerns that are local, and finding ways to make sure the representatives themselves are loyal to their constituents. Single-member districts solve all of these problems and more. They give voters a way to directly elect the representatives that will serve them in their specific location. They protect voters because the big parties don’t have as much influence. And they give the voters a sense of security because they can remove any representative that doesn’t meet their expectations. Single-member districts are the best way to elect the people who will represent us.
...s vote for a party instead for an individual, and when the votes are tallied for the region the regional representative seats for that region are divided among the parties in proportion to the share of the vote that each party received.
A longstanding national issue that continues to concern the public is the disproportionate representation of children from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds in special education. The fact is that the proportion of minority students in the population of school-age children has risen dramatically to over 35%, which is increasing the diversity of students in many public schools throughout the nation. This makes the phenomenon of disproportionality especially troubling. With a growing population of minority children comprising a greater percentage of public school students, we must be responsive to the growing needs of an increasingly diverse society. The overrepresentation of minority students in special education has been posed as an issue for more than 3 decades, but it is worth asking whether the efforts of legislative actions, educational reforms and legal challenges have really made improvements to this issue. More importantly, disproportionality should be examined as a correlation to underlying conditions that can pose a great effect upon not only the quality of a child’s education, but also ______.
It is in gaining a sense of our identity that we find a place to belong. This is presented in Episode 4, Stand Up, of the television series Redfern Now, directed by Rachael Perkins.
The legislative branch of America helps create the laws or legislation. Ideally, it works to create a society that is safe for all members. The State of California like the federal government has a bicameral legislature, in other words, composed of two chambers. The upper chamber is called the senate, while the lower is called the assembly. A unique process for the state level is that it allows for the initiative. This process circumvents the state congress and can create laws without their aide. In the state of California, every ten years, following a US census, which collects demographic information, state legislators draw redistricting plans for itself, California seats in the US House of Representatives, and the State Board of Equalization. There have been attempts to create a “non-partisan” redistricting commission, but this has been turned down by voters numerous times. Proposition 14, 39, 118, and 119 were all turned down by voters to create a non-partisan districting commission. Every decade a large portion of the state congress’s energy is spent on redistricting. In fact, two of the last four censuses, Supreme Court has had to step in to break a deadlock. In 1970, Ronald Reagan, a Republican, vetoed all together the Democratic redistricting plan. The Supreme Court had to step in and created its own plans for California to follow. Then in 1981, Democrats proposed redistricting as well as congressional delegation redistricting. The Republicans stopped this by adding referendums to the state ballot. Because it was too close to elections though, Supreme Court overturned these referendums in 1982. In 1984, they officially passed the new redistricting plan which was very similar to the original plans.
I am sure there is a formula someone could come up with to align with court rulings, divide the districts evenly in population, contiguity, and compactness. This would make the districts more fair and representative of the people, and we would not need the biases of a few people to draw the lines in their favor. Redistricting more impartial districts would also help raise competition and make the incumbents work for their votes. According to Ballotpedia, both California and Arizona seem to be the only states that actually attempt to be bipartisan by having an independent commission draw the lines for both congressional and legislative district lines. Ballotpedia (2017)