How Accurate/Fair Is The Voting In Your District?

When thinking about voting, one can go back to the early years of school where we are taught that each member of the community puts their ballot in the box, has their vote counted, and the election results are tallied up to find the winner. In the most simplistic form, barring fraud, that is what happens.

Many members of communities all across our great country do not realize the impact of their geographical district even though most of us have heard the term "Gerrymandering". Even those that are familiar with the term may not always understand the effect of redistricting. In short, district layout can have a significant effect on the election results as it can be used to "stack the deck" for the gain of a particular party or candidate.

We are now about 200 years into the use of the term Gerrymandering. It is derived from a Massachusetts governor in the early 1800s. He happened to sign a bill that redistricted his state in a manner that benefited his party. The resulting district looked similar to a salamander.

Other than the term gerrymander, the process is often referred to as "Packing" and "Cracking". Packing is the process of getting a concentrated voter demographic into a district in order to maximize their voting effect. Cracking is the process of breaking up the voting demographic in order to suppress it's influence.

Even in our current day and age, there are still signs of this process in district maps across the nation. Some favor Democrats while some favor Republicans. In short, they all circumvent the will of the people in favor of the whim of those in power at the time of redistricting.

For this reason, we can understand how some voters are essentially being robbed of their right to be represented. While they are legally able to vote, they are put into a district where their vote will fall under the threshold of influence. This type of packing and cracking, while not childs play, is also not rocket science. When redistricting, one simply has to break the precincts down by analyzing their voting results. With this information, it can be identified on the map which precincts favor Left/Right/Democrat/Republican/Etc.

Using this information, the district can easily be redrawn in a manner that spreads the "opposition" voters out among other districts that vote favorably. This prevents the opposition from getting a majority, as their votes are divided and placed into the "favored" districts. Since they will never put more than 50% of the opposition into a district, that opposition will have it's votes negated.

This is an unfortunate attempt to replace fair voting and constitutionally guaranteed representation with corrupt politics. The people in power, when given the unchecked ability to stay in power, will find methods such as this to do so.

This is something that we need to consider the next time our area is up for redistricting. We need to make sure that we are paying attention to our elected officials so that they may act responsibly. Ultimately, we would benefit to have a politician work for the community than to have one exposed for being corrupt. While it might be an uncomfortable change for a politician to know they are being watched like a hawk, it would also help them stay on the honest path that we're so often accusing our elected officials from leaving behind once in office.

To Which Party Do You Belong?

There are a couple of ways in which people make their ballot choices. In many cases, one will simply select the names that have their letter, a "D" or an "R" next to them. This type of voting lets the candidates off the hook with a significant portion of the voting population. The commonplace nature of this habit allows the candidate to cater to those that are "not" voting for his/her particular letter in order to collect more support.

The frustrating thing about this type of voting is the lack of accountability the voters hand over to the candidate. In reality, we as voters, are not simply "D" or "R". The alignment to a letter has become part of the construct of manipulation which propagates the corruption that we vocally despise.

The most simplistic descriptions of party alignment fall into the following realms:

D: Liberal
R: Conservative

However, this is an entirely misleading oversimplification. A "D" in one part of the country may have significant differences with a "D" in another part of the country. The same can be said for "R". To make matters even worse, there are a lot more letter that must be accounted for which usually fall under "I" (Independent: Libertarian, Green, Socialist, etc).

To break through the construct, we can see that the "smoke and mirrors" hiding the core problem do not account for the fact that we are generally falling into a couple more enlightening categories: Social and Economic.

Within those two categories, one will notice the labels of Liberal, Moderate, and Conservative. This yields 6 different core ideologies (each with an exponential number of sub ideologies) that must be rolled up into whichever letter they apply to their party choice.

1. Socially Liberal
2. Socially Moderate
3. Socially Conservative
4. Economically Liberal
5. Economically Moderate
6. Economically Conservative

Choosing a party to identify with does not necessarily accommodate the fact that not all members of a party are consistent with their level of slant to a particular side of the isle. There are cases where Democrats are more conservative than some Republicans and some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats.

As far as the people at large go, Democrats are usually considered "for the people" and Republicans are considered "for big business". However, that is not an all encompassing description of our political reality.

An Oklahoma Democrat, for example, is considered significantly more Conservative than a California Republican. This leads to the point that I'm trying to make. There is not a simple Left to Right scale that determines if we are Democrat or Republican. There is a deeper scope depending upon what part the issue we're aligned with. This acknowledgment of the broader picture is the exact reason that the Two Party System is feeling the presence of additional parties. "We the people" are finding that when we're not appropriately represented, that an alternative exists.

How Represented Are We?

In light of the current political stage, we are forced to wonder if our elected officials are working for us. In recent years, it has become more apparent that the voters are not the people being represented but rather the people exploited in order to harvest votes and stay in office.

It was once said that there are not enough good people in office. It has also been said that power corrupts. Following those two statements, it is summarily said that good people may run for office, but are corrupted by the time they are elected. Given the information we have, it would seem that the corruption associated to power is so prevalent that it is impossible to navigate the money required for political office without being corrupted by the process.

As a member of a region that is rich in common sense and diverse in community, it seems that corruption does not have to be an insurmountable force. We must first acknowledge that "we" control who represents us. We have the ability to hire and fire those individuals. Essentially, their responsibility to us is balanced by our responsibility to keep them honest.

Just as "locks don't keep bad people out, they keep honest people honest", the people within our community need to keep their representatives honest by paying attention to what they do "after" they are elected. It could be said that a lot of our representatives could have stayed on the right path if they knew their community was paying attention.