For the last three years, Donald Trump has perpetuated the claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. And according to a poll conducted by CNN in August, 39% of Americans believe it to be true.
However, it's not. Investigations conducted by both the Justice Department and the New York Times have found no significant evidence of voter fraud. Officially, this idea of a “stolen election” has been met with multiple campaigns by social media sites, government officials, and news organizations intended to stop this spread of misinformation.
But what if I told you our elections are getting stolen? In a way that requires no rigging of voting machines, no fake electors, and is protected by the law?
When we vote in the United States, we each vote for a representative who is running in our district. Although the number of voters per district stays constant, the number of districts varies based on the state’s population - states with larger populations have a greater number of districts. However, to account for population changes within a state, our districts are redrawn every 10 years after the census in a process known as redistricting.
Of course, each state can redraw its districts in multiple different ways. Ideally, each one would follow the “one person, one vote” rule, be competitive, and be compact.
But unsurprisingly a majority of districts in the United States fail to reach this standard. Mainly because most redistricting is done by State legislators – an organization that is almost always controlled by one party. State legislators are able to manipulate the boundaries of these districts through processes such as “cracking”, in which they dilute the voters of the opposing parties to ensure they never have a competitive advantage, and “packing”, where they draw all the opposing party’s voters into a singular district to reduce their effect on other districts.
This manipulation of state boundaries to create an unfair advantage for a particular party is known as gerrymandering–it’s the process in which “politicians pick their voters, instead of voters picking their politicians”--and it leads to representatives who are unresponsive to their constituents.
For an example of gerrymandering, look at Illinois’ congressional map, which has received a failing grade from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project due to its lack of competitiveness, compactness, and large number of county splits. Ironically, Illinois’ partisan advantage is also for a party that has claimed to champion voting rights for years.
But fortunately for us, Gerrymandering has a tried and true solution: independent citizen redistricting commissions. These independent commissions tackle the root of the problem by cutting out our state legislators. California, one of the few states that have employed this commission has one of the most competitive congressional plans in the country. In the last six years, 12 of their congressional seats have changed hands.
Yet although the commission clearly works, it still suffers from the irony of the situation: our representatives who have the power to introduce the commission have no motivation to do so. Through gerrymandering, they are able to secure the success of their party. What politician would want to vote out the ability to do that?
So, in the end, the power to preserve the democracy of our voting system lies in the hands of the people. Thus, this November, I’ll cast a ballot in an election for the first time. As citizens of a democracy, voting is our most substantial power – it's the power we have to make change. But I recognize that democracy requires more engagement than just Novembers in election years. The first vote I cast will be made after involving myself in citizen redistricting advocacy initiatives in my own state. As it is only through involving ourselves in these grassroots initiatives, that we can ensure that the votes we cast count.
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