L22. Political Representation in the US 1990s

Question 1

What did the VRA do?

Answer 1

Established an effective right to vote, made registration and participation easier

Question 2

What is gerrymandering?

Answer 2

the manipulation of election district boundaries in order to “unfairly” reduce or enhance the political power of a social group or political party

Question 3

What the two common techniques of gerrymandering?

Answer 3

Cracking: divide a group among districts (make it so that a party can never have a majority in any district, aka never win any)

Packing: creating an excessive concentration of a group within a district so they win less overall
(maximise the number of wasted votes)

Question 4

Use the example of Mississippi to explain gerrymandering

Answer 4

• Pre voting rights act there was 6 congressional districts in Mississippi with 1 district holding a black majority
• after voting rights act is passed the white supremacist government re-draws the district boundaries to crack the delta region so there are no black majority districts
• violating the VRA

Question 5

Explain what section 5 of the VRA is and what is meant to prevent

Answer 5

• regulates any change to any “standard practice, or procedure with respect to voting” aka (pre-clearance)
• used to limit gerrymandering
• was overturned by the supreme court in 2013

Question 6

What are newly implemented strategies to prevent racialized people from voting?

Answer 6

• photo-identification rules require types of id cards that were expensive and hard to obtain
• states justified on the grounds of preventing voter fraud (never any real fraud in elections)

Question 7

What is the reason for the VRA (Supreme court was asked this)

Answer 7

• narrow answer was allowing people access the ballot box
• broad answer was political empowerment

Question 8

Is partisan gerrymandering allowed?

Answer 8

yes, completely legal

Question 9

How can racial gerrymandering be proved?

Answer 9

Long time no answer, but general understanding that legal standard was needed
- was developed between 1969-1980
- case of thornburg v. Gingles which states there are 3 things to look at to determine if there is racial gerrymandering, political cohesiveness (minority groups must vote alike), racial polarization (whites vote against minority candidates), and geographic criterion (minority community must be large and compact)
- key issue here is that compact is not defined and why is it important?

Question 10

Why is the connection between race and voting preferences in districting?

Answer 10

• black people almost always vote democrat
• creates issue with gerrymandering and the department of justice
• advantageous for conservatives to create black majority districts to create wasted votes
• democrats want to create a black majority that isn’t also full with white democrats

Question 11

How does GIS help districting issues?

Answer 11

• powerful enough to re-draw districts
• can be used to reconcile the problem
• unfortunately can create very odd shaped districts (Ex. North Carolina)