Chapter 1: Elections

I'm going to be honest on here and tell you that I've never really understood how elections worked. All I knew was that you go somewhere, fill out your ballot, turn it in, and go home. I never really understood what the Electoral College was or what it did or how it even mattered in today's elections. After reading this chapter though, I know now that I was seriously mistaken.

There are three key points in this chapter that I thought deserved a thorough talking about since so many of us don't really know that much about the elections that run our country. The first is Gerrymandering which is "the practice of drawing congressional districts to influence the outcome of elections based on demographic information. Used by both parties, it can render some voters' interests almost irrelevant and tends to help incumbents." I already knew a little bit about Gerrymandering. I knew that it was the reasoning behind why so many of our congressional voting districts are, for lack of a better word, wonky shaped. Some look like snakes, others look like an ink-blot. In the end it all comes down to someone at the state level decided that they wanted the incumbents of certain areas to be reelected so they drew the lines in such a way that would benefit that particular politician. I've never really understood why we still let the state governments draw the lines. Why not let a computer algorithm take all the information of population and any other necessary information and draw the districts. That would seem to be a much fairer way of dividing up the districts.

And why is this outrageous behavior not being covered by any of the news stations? Is it because they don't know it's happening or do they not care? Or maybe it's because both parties use this technique to help themselves? Why do we let these people cut us up into sections that help them? Why hasn't anyone really stood up and said 'No, this is unacceptable. Every voters vote must be counted or there is not point to the election. The point of the vote is so that every person's voice and opinion is heard.' And yet in this country where our greatest freedom is the ability to speak our minds, we are muted in the most important forum of all. We allow ourselves to be muted at election time. And the people muting us are the very same people we all complain about everyday.

The next time I have to opportunity to ask a political candidate a question, it's going to be this: What are you going to do about Gerrymandering? Will you allow the districts to be drawn in an unbiased way or will you continue the muting of your constituents' voice.

I think I'll stop there for now. Look for my next post from Chapter 1 that will deal with the Electoral College and Presidential Elections. Please feel free to leave any and all comments you wish. I want to open up a dialogue where we can all share our thoughts and maybe we can come together and fix all the issues that we see wrong with this country and create a better place that we can be proud to live in.