| dc.description.abstract | From George Washington's first presidential veto to the present day, redistricting issues have been highly controversial in the U.S. Gerrymandering, the act of manipulating district lines to grant someone an unfair advantage during elections, has caused the American society to become increasingly diverse, and it deprives the citizens of fundamental democratic rights. Independent redistricting commissions, which replace biased legislative redistricting, have become the premier institutional solution to the problem of partisan and racial gerrymandering, and initiatives to implement these commissions have skyrocketed in recent years. However, in awe of this evidently perfect solution to one of America’s most significant threats to democracy, most people seem to overlook, or even ignore, essential democratic principles. The independent redistricting commission is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; it might appear as the ideal way to construct the act of redistricting, but, in reality, it deprives American citizens of their fundamental democratic rights. | |
