Gerrymandering

Thanks to Doug Zywiol for catching the video above on gerrymandering as it gives a short history on it.  It comes from Vox which continues to be incredible.  Here is their article on the topic and clearly they have their bias which is for non partisan gerrymandering.  Whenever I post about this topic I have to add in what I learned in my PhD courses that is that political scientists believe that incumbency is much more potent than gerrymandering.  I still remember when Gary Condit was under suspicion for Sandra Levy's disappearance and his marital relationship with her, he still won all the new precincts in his gerrymandered district that he had been representing.  So my two cents (and I certainly keep this from my students is that non partisan gerrymandering is a great idea, but with Congress' inability to work, it would be interesting to see if Maine and CA, for example, have improved their legislative output after they started term limits.   Soap box aside if you use the search function on my blog, you will find lots of other information on teaching gerrymandering.  

An Electoral Map Without Gerrymandering

Vox is a great news site in line with 538 as innovative.  You will also be seeing more of it on our new Economics Teachers Blog which now has lots of posts for those teaching that growing field.

Well we all know that even if you push gerrymandering to the courts to decide judges are appointed by elected officials or run for office so even there we would see some partisanship.  Well this Vox article talks about a math PhD and an engineer who joined together to create an algorithm to that cuts a state in half, by population, and then half again, until it has the requisite number of House districts.  It needs work as it doesn't account for natural boundaries, historic neighborhoods and don't worry about trying to balance out political parties.  But it is an interesting first step.

More to the point for you the teacher, it brings up ways to consider alternatives to our gerrymandered system.   But, at least according to political scientists, it also brings up the question as to what can be done about the fact that political scientists say that the real problem is not gerrymandering, but incumbency - meaning that after the first re-election it is almost impossible to get rid of an incumbent even with gerrymandering  

Gerrymandering

This is a short on gerrymandering (they called it "gerry rigged").   The media always say that gerrymandering is what keeps politicians in office and political scientists claim it is the "incumbency factor." 

Several Helpful Videos (primaries, gerrymandering)

Thanks to my colleague Rich Hoppock for these videos on primaries, a tie in the electoral college and gerrymandering explained. 

Partisan Gerrymandering

Here and here are stories on a US District court decision that said the 2000 redrawing on a Congressional district in VA has unconstitutionally packed African-Americans together.  Therefore by 2016, the district needs to be withdrawn.  This is just in time for the flipped video my students watch on gerrymandering. 

Awesome Video on Gerrymandering

Not only does this video define gerrymandering, but it also graphically shows gerrymandered districts in North Carolina.  Two minutes and your students will get it! 

Gerrymandering and Virginia

Gerrymandering, explained

My home state of Virginia just had its gerrymandered Congressional districts thrown out as you can see in this article.  For those of you teaching the concept, you can see a nice explanation above.  Be sure to hit the tabs at the bottom to see everything Vox has labeled.  Virginia has until September to improve its map.  

Midterm Election Ads

This is a great set of advertisements, which was Tweeted to me by Mashable, some of which I am going to show my government student tomorrow.  As part of the presentation, we'll review the following terms: midterm, gerrymandering, incumbent, open seat, primary, caucus, Baker v. Carr, Westbury v. Saunders, # in the House, # in the US Senate, general election, etc. Here are all of the ads.

In case you missed the Cowboy - Washington game last night, Ed Gillespie (R) ran an ad tying the Washington team name to over involvement of government 

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: This is from Lina Trullinger, sometime contributor to this blog. It has great graphics and examples.

Gerrymandering and Filibusters

View more documents from Lina Trullinger.

State Elections

About ten years ago David Poole started vpap.org his passion was Virginia politics.  Today it is the leading online site in the US for information on a state legislature.  If your state doesn't have anything like it, you might want to consider using it.  For example, it lists every candidate for the house and state senate since 1997 and tells you where the money was raised and you can then see who else the person or group gave to in an election.  Furthermore there are maps of each district and there is even a redistricting section so you can see if a district became more or less Democratic or Republican.  It even has local races and, for example, here is my county - Fairfax.  One thing we do is to compare incumbents and challengers to see where each is raising money.  Also we look at targeted races to see how the state parties gives so much to those races.  In short it can help any teacher nationwide who is teaching about elections at the state and local level.   Above is a video explaining which senate races were targeted and why and the role of partisan gerrymandering. 

More Gerrymandering

Here is a great map generated by the WashPost where they have come up with a "gerrymandered index with the highest scores being the most gerrymandered.  Essentially the WashPost generated the score from seeing how far from a circle the districts are.   If you want to see a more even handed group of districts look at this previous post or this FairVote site.   

The Gerrymandering Game

View more documents from Lina T.

Redistricting
Above (click on the full screen icon to read it) is a great idea from Lina Trullinger and here is a link to the redistricting game.

The Voting Rights Act Decision

There is so much out there on the Supreme Court 5-4 decision to strike down section IV and leave it to Congress, but the video above is a great, concise history of voting rights (or lack there of) in the US.

Some people believe the ruling will make it harder to create minority-majority House seats, but 538.com has a piece arguing using statistics that (using GWU professor John Sides of the Monkey Cage) that gerrymandering from the 2010 census has only netted the Republicans 7 seats and therefore the decision today might not hurt Democrats as much as they think.

Here is a third perspective from The Fix which argues that Obama is now in a tough spot since he would have to get through any legislation passed an unfriendly House of Reps.

Cracking and Packing

This weekend certainly has been a busy one for this site and here is another addition.  I have been teaching about "cracking and packing" for years and along comes the NY Times w. actual examples and a graphic so show this gerrymandering phenomena as well as three other techniques.

Gerrymandering Explained

Analysis of All Swing House Seats

Nate Silver started 538.com four years ago to cover the presidential race to do what no other poll was doing, predict the electoral college vote which matters a whole lot more than any national poll.  Well, now he does House, Senate and a ton other other races.  Here, for example is his current analysis on the House of Representatives.  He has the Republicans with a solid 230 and the Dems coming in at 180.  Now this number will change between now and November as Silver aggregates polls and weighs them depending on their size and accuracy in the past.  This leads to a nice discussion of what it is about our electoral make-up that the overwhelming majority of House seats rarely change (incumbent advantage say political scientists, rather than gerrymandering). 

Magruder's e-book In-Service

Tomorrow Meghann Jones is doing an in-service in my county on using Magruder's US government e-book (and here is an ancillary site for the e-book) which is used by 90% of our nation's government students.

• Above is a video by Kevin O'Keefe on how to use the e-book.
• Here is a very short video on how to split one's computer screen so the student can look at the e-book and an assignment.
• Here is a scavenger hunt by Kevin O'Keefe and Laura Wolf which is important to give students before starting to use the e-book. It is always a good idea to start by introducing one's students to the e-book to save on problems later.
• Here is a lesson on gerrymandering using Magruder's by Kevin O'Keefe and Laura Wolf.
• For Meghan's in-service she has come up with a number of items including a warm-up, a webquest, flashcards and two student worksheets all of which you can find here. 

Redistricting Game

I am about to do redistricting with my government kids and I always like to start with them playing the redistricting game.  I actually go to the second screen where they have to do partisan gerrymandering.  The game really frustrates the kids as there is no correct answer, just better results.  

Incumbency Advantage

Ask a political scientist what they think of non partisan gerrymandering and most will tell you that the "incumbency advantage" is much more important than how a seat has been drawn. The graphic above and here shows that point beautifully.  Here is a short article arguing that the 2010 advantage was down a bit to 5% and another graphic showing it was about 6%.

Why the Presidency is Weak

Thanks to my colleague, Frank Franz, for this great interview with Obama. The president does a really great job of explaining why he is so (obviously to him) limited from polarized press, the filibuster, gerrymandering, etc.