Gerrymandering North Takoma Sample Clauses

Gerrymandering North Takoma. Gerrymandering is when electoral boundaries are drawn to advantage or disadvantage a particular group, party, or politician. Let us assume we are the leaders of a state branch of Party A, a party in the United States that has recently adopted an unequivocal anti-gerrymandering stance. Decisions on redistricting are devolved to the states. As a result, the constitutional structure permits tactics such as gerrymandering – perverse incentives can conspire to encourage it, even. Party A has recently gained control of North Takoma, a politically competitive state with a high population and an accordingly important number of congressional seats. This is our state, and we now face the decision of what to do with North Takoma’s redistricting process.5 Our first instinct is to implement a non-partisan redistricting process, ensuring gerrymandering is no longer a political practice within North Takoma. However, something happens which gives us pause. The opposing Party B has recently taken over the state legislature of South Takoma, a neighbouring state with similar characteristics and the same level of political importance. They have mercilessly gerrymandered that state, all but ensuring that, despite South Takoma’s overall political competitiveness, Party B will secure a vast majority of the seats that South Takoma sends to the federal legislature and that their control over state politics is guaranteed for some time. Two factions soon emerge within Party A. One says we must stick to our principles. We cannot fight South Takoma’s gerrymandering with a gerrymander of our own. It would be intrinsically wrong to do so and cause tangible damage to democracy within North Takoma. The other faction argues that we must make a limited retaliatory gerrymander. They argue that we are right to accept the discrete and serious wrongs involved in the act of gerrymandering. However, if we do not gerrymander in response to the South Takoman gerrymandering, there are serious consequences for our party’s performance in federal elections. Though we 5 I have discussed this example in further detail elsewhere (Xxxxx, 2022). acknowledge that it would be fairer overall if there is no gerrymandering, all we can do now is to ensure an approximately level playing field between our parties by mitigating the wrongdoing inflicted by Party B. The only way to do this is by cancelling out the South Takoman gerrymander with a North Takoman one. There are analogous examples that follow a similar st...