字幕列表 影片播放 列印英文字幕 In April 2015, House Democrats proposed a bill to end the practice of “Gerrymandering”. Before we explain what that is, imagine an election where one party gets the most votes, but because of the way the votes are grouped, the other party wins the election. Doesn’t really seems like democracy, right? Well, this sort of “vote grouping” occurs in nearly every state. And it helps incumbent parties maintain their power in the legislature, even in cases when the majority of people don’t want them there. So, what exactly is Gerrymandering, and how does it work? Well, every state has a certain number of congressional districts, depending on the state’s population. Every two years, voters in those districts elect a single Representative to Congress. Every ten years the boundaries of these districts may be redrawn to represent the changing population. Gerrymandering is the practice of redrawing congressional districts in order to group all of an opposing party’s voters into a few large districts, while grouping all the controlling party’s voters into many smaller districts. Since each district gets a single representative, regardless of size, you end up with drastically unequal representation in Congress. You can see Gerrymandering in practice by looking at North Carolina’s 2012 House elections. The results showed about 50% voting Democrat, and 48% voting Republican. However, only four democrats were elected, compared to 9 Republicans. It is probably unsurprising that North Carolina alone holds three of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. But how can this practice be legal? Well, in 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that the practice could potentially violate the 14th Amendment on Equal Protection. However they could not agree on a standard for what actually constituted Gerrymandering, or figure out an alternative solution. In 2004, the Supreme Court revisited the issue, this time saying that the problem was unsolvable. Since the court could not rule one way or the other, it could not be ruled unconstitutional and is therefore still technically legal. Gerrymandering has long been understood to stand in the way of true democracy, while helping partisan politicians consolidate power. Currently the Supreme Court is examining the issue of constitutionality of using independent groups to draw district lines, instead of biased legislators. Some have pointed to the Republican congressional victory in 2014 as a direct result of Gerrymandering. States like Pennsylvania voted nearly half Democrat, but only got about a quarter of the available seats. One of the anti-Gerrymandering bill’s sponsors put it best: instead of voters choosing their representatives, representatives end up choosing their voters. Political parties in America are also preventing people from voting with a number of other somewhat scary tactics... To learn more about this serious issue, take a look at our video here. Thanks for watching TestTube! Please subscribe now so you don’t miss a single video!