Gerrymandering
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Editing Gerrymandering[[1]]Gerrymandering is a controversial form of redistricting in which electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for an electoral advantage, usually in the favor of ruling incumbents or a specific political party. Gerrymandering may also be used to advantage or disadvantage particular constituents, such as a racial, linguistic, religious or class group.
The term gerrymander serves both as a verb meaning to commit gerrymandering as well as a noun describing the resulting electoral geography. Although named after governor Elbridge Gerry, who pronounced his name [gɛɹi] (with a hard G), the word gerrymander is usually pronounced with a soft G, [ʤɛɹimændɚ].
Although all electoral systems which use multiple districts as a basis for determining representation are susceptible to gerrymandering to various degrees, governments using single winner voting systems where elected politicians are responsible for drawing districts are the most vulnerable. Most notably, gerrymandering is particularly effective in nonproportional systems that tend towards fewer parties, such as first past the post. Among western democracies, only Israel and the Netherlands are free from gerrymandering in the national government, as they employ electoral systems with only one (nationwide) voting district.
The term gerrymandering sometimes includes instances of malapportionment, where the electoral rules allow districts to significantly differ in population size. Although the possibility of districts being unequal in population can make gerrymandering particularly easy and effective towards securing electoral advantage, gerrymandering can still be done when districts are required to have equal representative to population ratios.
There are two principal strategies behind gerrymandering: maximizing the effective votes of supporters, and minimizing the effective votes of opponents. One form of gerrymandering, packing, is to place as many voters of one type into a single district to reduce their influence in other districts. A second form, cracking, involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to reduce their representation by denying them a sufficiently large voting block in any particular district. The methods are typically combined, creating a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure even greater representation for voters of another type.
Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect - by packing opposition voters into districts they will already win (increasing excess votes for winners) and by cracking the remainder among districts where they are moved into the minority (increasing votes for eventual losers), the number of wasted votes among the opposition can be maximized. Similarly, with supporters now holding narrow margins in the unpacked districts, the number of wasted votes among supporters is minimized or GRCs<Garmen manipulated smaller districts and made them larger to swallow up oppposition votes, denying opposition representation in Parliament! goto see wikipedia's article quoted and adapted herein[[2]]
[edit] Why did Yio Chu Kang get chew out of AMK GRC?
Yio Chu Kang now becomes a new SMC <Single member constituency>.
Its has a total of 25,072 voters
Ang Mo Kio GRC is the site where Prime Minister Lee is going to campaign and has a total of 159,864 voters
Suggested reason for making YCK as a single SMC is not given by the authority for drawing up the Singapore Electoral Boundaries 2006..therefore it is assumed that the reason is because of the percentage of opposition votes is higher in this area, and chewing it out means getting higher rating <by a significant percentage!> when the new Prime Minister get voted in again!: Alien talk 05:04, 8 March 2006 (SGT)
[edit] Links
New Electoral Boundaries for General Election 2006 [[3]]
see meritocracy
Link[[4]]
