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.

The Need for Map Variety in Schools

I thought that the different types of maps were really interesting. I realized that I’ve seen the Mollweide, Van Der Grinten, and Robinson maps in school a lot. Something similar to those maps is what I think most people think of when they picture a world map. We would probably consider those maps the most accurate, just because that is what we have always been taught in school. However, this could really be a problem when teaching students how to perceive the globe. We learn from one or two versions of the world map how the world looks, but since these maps aren’t entirely accurate, many misconceptions could be perpetuated. For example, the book stated that President Reagan used a specific map projection, the Mercator map, because it made the Soviet Union look much bigger than it actually was, which could scare people into accepting the anti-USSR views of the US government during the Cold War. Also, the book points out that most maps have their break in between North America and Asia; it seems that the distances between Russia and Alaska, and between Japan and Hawaii, should be much larger than they actually are. Students believe what they see on maps, so when they are not told that maps are not entirely accurate, or are not shown different map projections, their understanding of world geography is not complete.
From reading the book, it seems like the Dymaxion Map might actually be more accurate in representing the surface area of countries than the other maps. Unfortunately, this map was very difficult for me to read, and I had to turn the page around in order to really distinguish what was where. It also makes it harder to see the distance between the countries. Therefore, even though the Dymaxion Map is more accurate in some ways, it may not be the most useful in getting a picture of the relationships of countries. Actually, a globe is probably the most useful tool in teaching students what the world looks like. The problem with a globe is that only a few people can study a globe at one time. Perhaps in the coming years, teachers will be able to use large projection screens with digital models of the world to educate students.

Predicting Migration

I thought that the case study (especially the map) in chapter four was very interesting. Usually I think of moving from country to country when I think of migration, and not necessarily from state to state. I also thought of immigration from other countries as more important than movement within a country. After all, the news coverage that we get is about the controversies about illegal immigrants from Mexico, not that more Americans from the Midwest and Northeastern United States are leaving their homes and more people are moving to the Southern states and some of the Western states. Because of reading this chapter I have realized that migration within a country is just as important as migration to or from a country, and that ways to predict migration are just as essential for the proper planning of an area. I never took into consideration that developing areas must look at their predicted growth in order to plan what to build. They cannot just wait until there seem to be a lot of people around in need of schools or doctor’s offices or grocery stores or even houses; in order to have those things built and ready by the time they are needed, or at least close to the time they are needed, construction must begin in advance, which would mean predicting how many people are coming to the area. This would also be important when planning neighborhoods; how many need to be created in order to provide housing for the people who want to move to the area. If those planning the neighborhoods could not make a prediction of the migration rate, then it is possible that too few houses would be built, which would mean that the area might end up losing some of the potential migrants to the area because they could not find a place to live. The whole future of the area could be threatened if there could not be fairly accurate predictions.