Redistricting Reform

The Redistricting Game was very difficult. I did game five, which was the reform redistricting. I had to redistrict the area so it followed the rules of the Tanner Bill. The Tanner Bill requires that not only must there be between 640,000 and 650,000 people in each district, but the district boundaries must be decided by an Independent Commissioner so that there is no partisan bias involved. This sounds like a good way to make districts equal, and I believe that it is, but it was very hard to accomplish. The Commissioner wanted the districts to be compact, and it was difficult to balance population and still have compact districts that didn’t upset either side. Since I had to divide up the districts without considering political parties, I was not even given the information about how many Republicans and Democrats were in each area. Because of this, I would make some changes, and one side would be angry, but I wouldn’t know how to fix it. Even though I was not supposed to be specifically pleasing one party, I didn’t want either party to be extremely upset, because I was afraid that when the legislature voting, my redistricting would not pass. Actually, when I finally got the districts approved by the commissioner, the Democrats were very happy with the results, but the Republicans were not. I decided to test my plan anyway, and in fact, the Republicans voted down my plan. However, the courts ruled that my redistricting was in accordance with the Tanner Bill, so it passed. It turns out that even though the representatives were originally three Republicans and one Democrat, after the next election, there were two Republicans and two Democrats elected. This change makes it seem that the Tanner Bill might be a good way to help stop sneaky gerrymandering. I think that a policy like the Tanner Bill would be a good thing to become a law, because it seems to make it a lot harder to gerrymander. When I found out that politicians manage to gerrymander without getting caught, I was angry. I don’t think that it is fair to the people that those who redraw the voting districts can have so much power over who gets elected. If the vote of the people can be so easily overruled because of which voting district they belong to, then we don’t really live in a democracy, because everyone’s vote is not actually equal. I am realizing as I get older that there are many ways in which those in power take power away from the voters. Because of this, I will definitely support any attempts to stop things like uneven redistricting.