gerrymandering and whatever

Tactics such as ________ black voters into a given district or ________ them to make black voters a minority in all districts can be illegal.

"packing" "cracking"

Name the 3 ways gerrymandering could take form.

-The controlling party may try to force the opposition party into as few districts as possible. - The controlling party could also try to dilute the opposition across many districts so that they won't have a voting majority in any of them. -Or they could draw strangely shaped districts to split opposition votes or combine the votes of the party in power.

When was the reapportionment act passed?

1842

Why does it matter to vote for your state legislatures?

Because mostly old white people vote in Midterm elections, so all the republican candidates win.

What happened after the 1990 census?

The supreme court invalidated several such redistricting plans as unconstitutionally race-conscious.

What did the supreme court rule in 1985?

The supreme court ruled that manipulating district borders for political advantage is unconstitutional.

Why is gerrymandering hard to prove in court?

There could be loop holes because it is hard to prove "reasonable borders," also we don't really know what it means to represent the population "appropriately." And, no one can really prove that they made the districts uneven on purpose.

What did the supreme court rule in 1962?

They ruled that districts must have "reasonable" borders and must represent the population "appropriately."

What is another rule made about gerrymandering?

You can not draw your lines to favor a racial or ethnic group.

Gerrymandering has been addressed by both _______ and the _____________.

congress and the supreme court.

Each state legislature redistricts their state into the appropriate numbers of congressional districts, with the goal of making sure that...

each district has very close to the same population as the other districts.

Sometimes in gerrymandering, the districts are drawn to split the votes of...

ethnic, racial, religious, or other class groups.

Technically, gerrymandering is __________, but its hard to prove.

illegal

When were tactics such as "packing" and "cracking" first used?

in the south after the Civil war to dilute the black vote.

What did racial gerrymandering originally refer to as?

manipulating legislative district lines to under-represent racial minorities.

A ____________ almost always controls a _____________.

single party state legislature

What happens once every ten years, following the census?

the 435 members of the US House of Representatives are reapportioned based on the population of each state, relative to other states.

What is gerrymandering?

the act of redrawing the lines of a congressional district district to give one political party a voting advantage over another.

What does the reapportionment act state?

the reapportionment act required congressional districts to be contiguous (sharing common border; and touching) and compact.

What happened in 1982?

the voting rights act was amended to require many political jurisdictions to create "majority-minority" districts in order to allow more racial minorities to elect candidates of their choice.