Fair Apportionment In The United States

The United States was founded on freedom so we are technically supposed to have all terms of political equality. We do have political, social, and economic equality to an extent. Social equality for example, differs in states and with certain people. Things like race riots and killings of colors still happen today like recently in Ferguson. Our social equality has improved from the eighteen hundreds, but for for 2015 we could improve immensely. I do wish we had perfect social equality though, because I believe everyone should actually be treated equal no matter the race, age, or sexual orientation.

Proportionality is a key factor in assessing the fairness of a voting system, if a parties number of votes is not equal or close to their number of seats in parliament then the voters’ are being misrepresented. AMS is a PR system, which results in a party’s

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution states that, “Representatives…shall be apportioned among several states...according to their respective Numbers.” Apportionment is the mathematical process of dividing and allocating the four hundred and thirty five seats in the House of Representatives among the fifty states based on the population figures collected by the Census Bureau. This process, according to the Constitution, must be conducted “within every subsequent Term of ten Years.” Each of the fifty states is guaranteed one representative. The number of House of Representatives from each state fluctuates every ten years due to population deviation.

ELECTIONS are based on three organizing concepts: equal respect, free choice, and popular sovereignty are the building blocks of fair and just elections. The democratic process should treat all citizens as free and equal persons. As applied to the electoral process this requires that each citizen equal opportunity to have his or her vote equally counted.

apportioned . . . according to . . . (population).” (Doc. D)

Diversity within the United States has been growing progressively within the past century. About 36 percent of the U.S. population is a part of a minority group, according to the 2010 U.S. Census (CDC, 2017). According to the U.S. Census, a “majority-minority” country is projected by the middle of 21st century, resulting in the white population becoming less than 50% of the population (Elchoufani, 2018). Overall, the life expectancy and child mortality in the U.S. has bettered; however, the minority undergo unequal distribution of illness, disease, disability, and death in comparison to non-minority (CDC, 2017). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), even with all the attempts help diminish health care disparities for minorities, the minorities continue to face these unequal disparities (BLH, 2015).

The Week Staff, authors of the article, “How to rig elections, the legal way”, use the article to explain what gerrymandering is and how it is used in the political system. According to the article, gerrymandering is a way for political parties to manipulate district lines to their advantage. This way, a specific party can gain more electoral votes in their favor. Many politicians use this technique, and it is perfectly legal for them to do it. However, just because gerrymandering is legal it does not mean it is fair. Many people are unaware of what gerrymandering is, and they do not understand what it does to the voting system. Gerrymandering is not fair to the voters, and redrawing districts should be given to people that are not partial

Compare and contrast the apportionment paradoxes. Which one of these do you find the most disturbing and why? Which one of these do you find the least disturbing and why: The Alabama and new-states paradoxes are similar because both deal with adding a new group, and both result in one of the groups losing something. However, the Alabama paradox deals with the total number of seats to be apportioned, and the new-states paradox relates to the same number of seats but an increase in number of states. The population paradox deals with an increase in population of one state, but it still loses items to another state that isn’t growing as quickly (“A Brief History”). The one I find least disturbing is the new-states paradox because there are a certain number of representatives, and each state needs to be fairly represented. If a new state is added, their representation needs to be counted so the only way is for existing states to donate some of theirs. The paradox that I find most disturbing is Hamilton’s Alabama paradox. By altering the number of representative seats, even by a difference of just one, Alabama lost one person to represent their

The state should use citizen voting age population, so there will be less differential in the voters between different districts. For a long period of time, the Supreme Court doesn’t accept the redistricting claims of political question: is the Constitution guarantees that each day job a republican form of government for a long time. It was all left for the Congress and the states to fix the puzzle. However, Baker v. Carr (1962), the Court decided to hear the claims under the equal protection clause and noticed that one-person, one-vote can arise the equal protection clause of the constitution (Oyez, 1). This comes to a conclusion that the Supreme Court should develop some political philosophy, which enforce all states to follow it. However, it turns out that the supreme court has muddled through the definition of one person, one-vote and how state legislators should be working on at this

The research will examine voting rights in relation to voting right inequalities and the society’s effort to have an all minority groups included in the civic process. The research will look into several historical factors that contributed to voting rights inequalities and how the society has evolved to solve issues related to the right to vote.

A transition to MMP at the federal level will result in marked improvement in a number of functional electoral areas. The first of which that will be addressed is that of greater voter turnout at elections. The majority of research conducted on electoral systems and voter turnout has supported the notion that voter turnout is greater in countries that have some form of proportional representation (PR) over countries with plurality or majoritarian electoral systems (Karp and Banducci 311). The average increase in voter turnout in countries with PR, as found across a number

The Huntington-Hill Method is a modified version of the Webster method, but it uses a slightly different rounding method. While Webster's method rounds at 0.5, the Huntington-Hill method rounds at the geometric mean. If a state's quotient is higher than its geometric mean, it will be allocated an additional seat. This method will almost always result in the desired number of seats which helps to avoid an Alabama Paradox.

Voting equality means that when it is time that a decision on policy be made, each member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote on a policy, with all votes being considered equal. Along with effective participation, voting equality is essential in constituting a democracy. For voting to be effective and equal, not only do citizens have to have reasonable access to voting locations, but they must also physically turn up and vote, something that does not always happen in practise. For instance, in the 2012 Presidential Election, 123,714,407 eligible citizens voted compared to 131,142,144 votes cast in the 2008 election (McDonald, 2012). That means there was a decrease in voter turnout of 3.4 percentage points from 2008 (61.6%) to 2012 (58.2%) (Andrews et al., 2012), prompting questions as to why 7,427,737 less voters participated. When a mere 58% of your country’s population chooses not to vote in the

In general, there are four apportionment methods has been identified by the case law of Buckley & Young Ltd v CIR (1978) 3 NZTC 61,271 (CA) (Buckley & Young Ltd v CIR , 1978), and their name are listed in below:

It is not merely that different voting systems count votes differently, but that different voting-system arrangements alter the incentives that voters and parties face to do certain things: to vote for one party over another, to try to appeal to one group of voters over another, and so on (Pilon 12)6.