Recently, US midterm elections are in full swing, and the term Jerry salamander also appears in the news from time to time. So what is Jerry salamander?
Gerrymander is a political term from the United States, which refers to manipulating election results with unfair constituency boundaries, and establishing an unfair political advantage to make the election results favor a specific party. The word
originated in 1812 when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge T Gerry divided the Boston district into a strange similar Salamander shape that concentrated the votes of the hostile Federalist Party in a few constituencies, thus making the Democratic-Republican Party candidates win a large proportion. Later, people combined his name with the end of the newt word to create this noun exclusive to American politics.
Why do you need to partition?
The United States allocates seats for the House of Representatives based on population, so each state will be refined into different constituencies, and each constituency will produce one seat. To ensure that their party holds a majority in the House, both Democratic and Republican parties rack their brains to use this mechanism.
How to operate Jerry salamander?
As shown in the figure above, the proportion of voters who support the green side is 60%, and 40% who support the yellow side are. If it is divided vertically into 5 constituencies, the green side will win in 3 constituencies and the yellow side will win in 2 constituencies. The electoral votes won by both yellow and green sides are equivalent to the number of voters. If
horizontally divides 5 constituencies, all 5 constituencies will be taken down by the green side.
If the voter accounts for a small proportion, if the "Jerry Salamander"-style constituency division method is adopted, as shown in the picture on the far right, the Huang side completely abandons the two constituencies and concentrates all its votes in the other 3 districts to ensure that the side defeats the Green side with a 3:2 advantage and achieves the victory of the more with less.
This is a bit like Tian Ji horse racing, but the reality is even more absurd than this.
Illinois Fourth Congressional District, two main residential areas of Hispanic Americans were forcibly connected together, and the middle connection was only one of the narrow intercontinental roads there. Note that this is just a constituency.
has something more complicated than this, that is, the Maryland Third Congressional District.
However, everything has its reasons for its existence. "Jerry Salamander" is a must-have in some states in the United States, especially southern states, and it is also acquiesced by the Supreme Court. Because slavery and racial discrimination are deeply rooted in Southern State, in order to ensure the voting rights of minorities (actually blacks) in Southern State, the "Jerry Salamander" was forced by the court. Otherwise, the southern states would immediately turn back to slavery by relying solely on local white conservative forces.
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