One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America Seabrook Nick

Specifikacia One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America Seabrook Nick

A redistricting crisis is now upon us This surprising compelling book tells the history of how we got to this moment from the Founding Fathers to today s high tech manipulation of election districts and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred hard fought principle of one person one vote Here is THE book on gerrymandering for citizens politicians journalists activists and voters Seabrook s lucid account of the origins and evolution of gerrymandering the deliberate and partisan doctoring of district borders for electoral advantage makes a potentially dry wonky subject accessible and engaging for a broad audience The New York Times Gerrymandering is the manipulation of election districts for partisan and political gain Instead of voters picking the politicians they want politicians pick the voters they need to get the election results they re after Surprisingly gerrymandering has been around since before our nation s founding And with technology those drawing the redistricting lines have now more than ever been able to microtarget their electoral manipulations with unprecedented levels of precision Nick Seabrook an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering pronounced with a hard G has written an illuminating urgently needed book on how our elections have been rigged through redistricting beginning with the Founding Fathers Abraham Lincoln the Civil War and Reconstruction and extending to the twentieth century s gerrymandering battles at the Supreme Court and today s high tech manipulations of election districts Seabrook writes of Patrick Henry who used redistricting to settle an old score with political foe and fellow Founding Father James Madison almost preventing the Bill of Rights from happening He writes of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry and corrects the mistaken notion of the derivation of the term gerrymander He writes of Abraham Lincoln and how his desire to preserve the Union led him to manipulate the admission of new states in order to maintain his majority in the Senate And we come to understand the place of the Supreme Court in its fierce ba