Gerrymandering of 2011

On my last post I mentioned that I would explain what the 2010 elections means for people. If you follow politics, then you know that gerrymandering is a system done after the census is taken. If you don't know what gerrymandering is, then you might have heard of redistricting.

The basic concept is that you redraw dividing boundary lines into whatever pleases your whim, as long as it follows basic guidelines. This is a simplified summation, and if you're interested in trying it out, there's a gerrymandering game:

"http://www.redistrictinggame.org"

For wikipedia information:
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering"

Here's an example of how things will play out:

Since Florida took 2 of New York's House Seats due to changes in population, Florida now has more representatives in the House of Representatives. Since a Republican governor was elected in Florida, the governor has some influence in how the Florida districts are set. Generally, the party in power maximizes their power and minimizes the minority. If you look at the wikipedia example, you can see that a minority can overpower a majority, which in my opinion is a real problem. On a side note, both parties do this, so please stop acting innocent. On another unrelated side note, the GOP messed up in failing to take Nevada and Delaware senators. Had they gain it, it would have been an unprecedented swing worthy of applause (not that they shouldn't be applauded for capturing the House, although I have mentioned before that I just prefer the Senate more). Add in a few more states with Republican governors and you have a high chance of a Republican supermajority in the House (general assumption).

Now, if you didn't bother checking the wikipedia site, I'll post it here.
Suppose there is party X and party Y, with zones A, B, and C.
100 people in the zone, 60 support X, 40 Support Y.
Normally, X would be the majority. However, suppose we have this scenario:
Let A have 34 people that support X
Let B have 13 people that support X and 20 people that support Y
Let C have 13 people that support X and 20 people that support Y
If you wanted perfect distribution just add 1 more X voter to B and C, and you would still get a party Y majority.
*Super credits to the person that explained this, although I don't know who the author is.

From this, we see that the minority has power over the majority. Now onto the concept of packing and cracking.
Packing is when you place all voters of a particular preference to an area to waste there votes. If this statement doesn't make sense, think of this: A district is known to vote 100% to a particular party. Assuming everyone votes the same way, the marginal effect of a vote is 0. Why? Well, if a district only voted party X then it wouldn't matter if 1 person voted for X or 1,000,000 people voted for X. The result would always be X. This is similar to situation A.
Cracking is where you minimize opposing votes. Assuming a district always votes 51% X and 49% Y, we see that X always wins. As you can see, the 49% that voted for Y is voided. This is similar to situation B and C.
I asked a few people if they knew what gerrymandering/redistricting was, and from what I can tell it's 50% (2 yes, 2 no). Obviously, I kind of expected it because of the education that they received (all 18+, but different high schools in NYC).
I would go into a long rant about how I lost my faith in the American voting system, but that's another story (that would most likely not be covered in this blog).

If you want to see the current districting, "http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/house"
Edit 1: I would like to note that while the usage of technology has made it more bipartisan and the dirty tactics have been deemed unconstitutional, the fact that this system can lead to abuse is something every citizen should be aware of.