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Gerrymandering In Presidential Elections

479 Words2 Pages

For the sake of expediency, the topics of gerrymandering and faithless electors will be touched upon lightly and will be followed by the conclusion. Gerrymandering, only if it was silly as as it sounded. Unfortunately it only makes our democratic system look silly. Gerrymandering is manipulating the the borders of congressional districts to favor a particular party or candidate. Although it has been used particularly for local and state elections, it can have a devastating effect on the presidential election. Currently, the electoral vote goes to the candidate who wins the popular vote. There being a push to change that to award the vote to who wins the congressional district like mentioned above(Fitz-Gerald, 2013) at first it seems like …show more content…

In Ohio, for instance, Republicans won 12 out of 16 House races "despite voters casting only 52 percent of their vote for Republican congressional candidates." The situation was even more egregious to the north. "Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress."”. This manipulation of the system is certainly not what the framers of the constitution had in mind and makes the electoral college system less and less reliable. This along with faithless electors, the men and women who truly vote for president, in 21 states do not have to vote for the popular candidate and usually the electors side with their party but is it right that on their whim, they can undo the will of thoughts of people. Even once "In 2004, a Minnesota elector voted for "John Ewards", which was almost the name of John Kerry's running mate." This was stated by Adam Conover and truly represents the electoral college as an elector from Minnesota, it was a good try on their part but a miss over all and along with him there were 157 other “faithless

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