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  • Essay / Political Organization of Space

    For Unit 4 of the AP Human Geography course, I decided to use the article “How Michigan is an Extreme Example of Gerrymandering” by Eric Lupher. The article discusses how gerrymandering is a problem throughout the United States, but in some places the situation is much worse than others, like Michigan. Gerrymandering is a practice of establishing political advantage for a particular party by manipulating district boundaries. This leads to less competitive elections and can create public distrust in our political process. Michigan's gerrymandering has gotten to the point where elections are not very competitive and it is one of four states whose legislative and congressional maps have been deemed extreme. It also gives some insight into how redistricting determines what people can vote for. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay This article is related to Unit 4 because it explains how gerrymandering and voting districts influence election results in Michigan. This topic is part of the unit and you can see it in one of the Essential Knowledge for Lasting Understanding B which states: “Districting, redistricting, and gerrymandering influence election outcomes at different scales. » This would make them related, because gerrymandering and redistricting heavily influence Michigan elections statewide. In other places in the article, he also gives some insight into how gerrymandering affects the United States nationally. I find this subject embarrassing because it seems to me that gerrymandering takes away people's rights. Specifically, gerrymandering means that voters have less impact on the government and who is elected when the people should have a significant role in appointing the government. This could lead to people distrusting the government and I think people should be able to trust their government. Distrust of the government could make things more difficult when passing laws or making decisions that affect the population, as the population might not trust it not to drain citizens for its own profit. This article appealed to me because I had no idea what gerrymandering was or even that it existed before reading this article and I love learning new things. I also like learning about how elections are done because I don't really understand how it's done and I'll have to one day, so I might as well start learning a little about it now. Another thing that appealed to me was how the government limits the impact of the people on those in government when I think that shouldn't happen, so I thought I would like to see what was happening. To summarize, I used the article “How Michigan is an Extreme Example of Gerrymandering” for the unit mission 4..