America’s Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts

“The compactness of a district -- a measure of how irregular its shape is, as determined by the ratio of the area of the district to the area of a circle with the same perimeter -- can serve as a useful proxy for how gerrymandered the district is. Districts that follow a generally regular shape tend to be compact, while those that have a lot of squiggles and offshoots and tentacle-looking protuberances tend to score poorly on this measure”.

This passage explains mainly how the states manipulate certain districts to their advantage. This gives the state office the power as to which voters they will be responsible for on the day of election. It isn’t geographic per say that shapes these districts but rather the Supreme Court that requires the state legislative to redraw the district lines every 10 years. This happens as voters move into different districts (without knowing), the population in each of these districts becomes uneven therefore state legislative try to ensure that the population is somewhat equal. But in the process of this, officeholders spread their opposing parties voter into different districts in which makes it difficult for the opposing party to gather a majority. And on the contrary, some officeholder will force all of the opposing parties’ voters into one district making it impossible to compete in any of the other districts.

I believe gerrymandering should be illegal because most parties use it to their advantages and manipulate it for power within their own lives and not to benefit us, the people. Politic figures are set to be leaders for the people but the only thing the United States has within its office, honestly is corruption. The only solution to this is to have people who aren’t part of the legislative to redrawn the districts, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. People speech of the United States being a “free” country, but are we truly free? This country manipulates people in the direction that benefits them and that goes with everything, not just for elections.