Platypus Thoughts

Definition of terms (simple)

Redistribution or re-districting is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed.

Gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency.

The United States has a representative democracy, in which not all citizens meet and make laws, but all citizens are given the right to choose who represents them.

Combine Ingredients

In most states, the incumbent legislators and governors determine where the electoral district lines are drawn. While often claiming to be based on census results, the make-up of the legislature and governors at the time of re-districting affects the outcome. The temptation for gerrymandering proves again and again to be irresistible. Combine this with many states’ efforts to disenfranchise groups of voters and you no longer have representative democracy. And, just to be clear, representative democracy refers to representation of the people, not representation of the representatives.

What’s a mother to do?

For starters, lets get the people whose main goal is re-election out of the kitchen. Re-districting should be based only on population within a state. Districts should be determined by a non-partisan state committee using only population data.

Polling places. Despite my occasional frustration with the U.S. Postal Service, they have done an excellent job of creating a system for sorting the mail based on the number of stops each carrier can deliver to on one day. The mighty zip code! If your zip code is any of these numbers (x, y, z), your polling place is (w). And make sure there are enough polling places so that lines do not extend for hours.

Extend elections to cover more than one day, including a weekend day, to take into consideration the number of people who hold down two or more jobs.

Do not restrict mail-in voting or secure drop-off places for ballots. Make efforts to collect ballots from hospitals, nursing homes, low-income developments, tribal reservations, and other places from which people have difficulty submitting their ballots.

I do, however, have concerns with instituting online voting as our country is clearly not capable of keeping those with evil intent (foreign and domestic) from hacking our systems. America is not great in this area.

As far as the Electoral College goes, it should go. A rant for another day.

(Photo credit: By Thomas Wolf, http://www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90107110)