Encourage students to think about what forms a border, who determines borders, and where borders can be found. In the first category,contorted boundariesare most important: a district with smoother boundaries will be more compact, and one with more squiggly boundaries will be less compact. A political boundary is an imaginary line separating one political unit, such as a country or state, from another. In redistricting, political boundaries are the boundaries of other governments, such as cities, towns, or counties, and political divisions, such as city council wards or state legislative districts. Blog 11: Why might meandering rivers make poor political boundaries Political boundaries - Ballotpedia And both Rhode Island and Washington provisions speak in terms of fair and effective representation, but without much construction by state courts to give further meaning. But, he added, "its proven really hard for people to take off their partisan hats.". The thirdGinglescondition tests the potential competition: whether the rest of the population in the area usually votes as a bloc for different candidates than those preferred by the minority community. The negation of socio-cultural linkages further eclipses the prospects of overcoming political divisions. Specifically, maps can help demonstrate how borders intersect physical and human geographical features, and how those intersections can lead to cooperation and/or conflict. Israel's borders explained in maps - BBC News Civil rights advocates including the North Carolina NAACP have already sued over the new maps, arguing the Legislatures decision to draw maps without considering race data violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires states to not dilute minority votes. Efficiency gap: This is one measure of how politically gerrymandered a legislative map is (and is currently the subject of a Supreme Court case). The map gives Democrats control of 14 of the states 17 seats, according to a Princeton Gerrymandering Project analysis that gave the state an F grade on the map, particularly singling out its lack of geographic compactness, partisan fairness and competitiveness. Where additional strongly Democratic districts are not possible, this map seeks to maximize the number of competitive districts (Cook PVI between D+5 and R+5). Is there a way to add political borders to a map? Terms of Service| A political map is a type of map that represents political divisions, or human-created boundaries, of the world, continents and major geographic regions. Imperial expansions in the 18th and the 19th centuries were wrought with the prospect of arriving at a perfect boundary set by natural limits (Morrison, 2014). The gap, expressed as a percentage, is the difference in each partys wasted votes as a share of the total votes cast in the state. We Drew 2,568 Congressional Districts By Hand. Sometimes these align with a natural geographic feature like a river to form a border or barrier between nations. We categorized partisanship into three buckets: But we didnt stop there. It can influence who wins elections, how political power is distributed, which communities are represented, and what laws are passed. Boundary - National Geographic Society Border - National Geographic Society Those results werent quite complete enough for our purposes. In 2011, Wisconsins 47th state assembly district did much the same for the noncontiguous portions of Blooming Grove and several other noncontiguous wards, and the 60th state assembly district did the same for the noncontiguous portions of Cedarburg. Privacy Notice| A border is a physical or political line that separates geographic areas. Activate students' prior knowledge and introduce vocabulary. Display each groups map in the classroom and provide sticky notes and pencils. If so, this would mean that the minoritys preferred candidate would almost always lose if the minority communitys voting power were not specifically protected. Bradlee, who launched the app in 2009, made this project possible by helping us update his app with election results from 2012 and 2016. Various rules limit where district lines may or may not be drawn. They reflect a seats expected performance over the long run, across a variety of political conditions. a system of spiritual or supernatural belief. Redistricting has become a partisan death match as lawmakers in both parties seek political advantages in many states. Philosophy, B.A. Few states define precisely what compactness means, but a district in which people generally live near each other is usually more compact than one in which they do not. It makes no attempt to adhere to the Voting Rights Act. The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute, striving to uphold the values of democracy. Colorado, for example, allows at most five percent total deviation between the largest and smallest districts; Missouri asks districts to be no more than one percent above or below the average, except that deviations of up to three percent are permitted to maintain political boundaries. Various rules limit where district lines may or may not be drawn. Special thanks to the educators who participated in National Geographic's 2008-2009 National Teacher Leadership Academy (NTLA), for testing activities in their classrooms and informing the content for all of the Beyond Borders: Using Maps to Understand European Physical and Cultural Landscapes resources. For example, coastlines are borders between the regions of land and water, and mountains may serve as borders between different countries or different cultural groups. The final map splits Cincinnati and its diverse suburbs in Hamilton County into three different districts, pairing urban, Democratic voters with more rural, conservative areas. ignore the cultural anity while making eorts for political and economic integration (Ahmed 2012). It is the only set of state maps (other than the current congressional boundaries) that we did not draw by hand. For example, if a precinct accounted for 5 percent of the Democratic candidates votes in a county, that precinct would be assigned 5 percent of the candidates absentee votes for the county. This calculation is based on historical data between 2006 and 2016, although it includes an adjustment for the fact that minority representation has slightly increased over time. In North Carolina, neither congressional nor state legislative plans are subject to gubernatorial veto. Elicit ideas such as wars between countries, natural resources, or dividing land evenly between different groups. To draw the other four maps, we needed up-to-date vote data in the app.1 So we acquired precinct-level voting results for the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections from Decision Desk HQ, along with the boundaries of the precincts in those elections. 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. Michal LeVasseur, Ph.D., National Geographic Alliance Network Liaison Learn more about U.S. immigration with this curated resource collection. Gerrymander districts to favor Republicans 3. Instruct students to use the information in three of the mapsReligions, Mountains and Rivers, and Languagesto determine where they would place borders in the Outline map and draw them. "Illinois is an example of where the fact that districts look funny actually does flag the fact that they not only look funny, but they are extremely politically biased.". A district that has a 60 percent chance of being represented by a Democrat and a 40 percent chance of being represented by a Republican, for example, counts as 0.6 of a Democratic representative and 0.4 of a Republican representative. Tell students that they will have an opportunity to present and discuss their maps in Lesson 1, Activity 2 of this unit. Political features are characteristics . Remind students that, for the maps they created in Lesson 1, Activity 1, they were asked to draw borders as they saw fit. Emily Wade, B.A. When considering race in drawing districts, whether to satisfy the Voting Rights Act or otherwise, consider other factors in the mix as well. Almost as often as state law asks districts to follow political boundaries, it asks that districts be compact. By constitution or statute, 32 states require their legislative districts to be reasonably compact; 17 states require congressional districts to be compact as well. Occasionally, states list these constraints in priority order, and expressly require satifying high-priority criteria before turning to the others. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. AP Human Geo - 4.4 Defining Political Boundaries | Fiveable Introduction The political boundaries of Chile provide relatively natural biogeographic boundaries because of the topography of desert, mountain, and ocean boundaries. Where additional majority-minority districts are not possible, the map seeks to maximize coalition districts where no racial group makes up a majority. (Not one more death! Kim Hulse, National Geographic Society But overall, it does a reasonable job of detecting which maps are more convoluted than necessary. Use these resources to explore more about political boundaries. Iowa both limits the total population deviation to five percent, and also sets the overall average deviation at no more than one percent. "The suburbs have rebelled," he joked, "and the empire is striking back against the suburbs.". Having politicians define their own districts has not gone entirely smoothly and two cases involving political gerrymandering, or the drawing of districts (especially oddly shaped districts) to favor one party over another, are now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Audrey Mohan, 2007-2008 Grosvenor Scholar, National Geographic Society, Margaret A. Legates, Coordinator, Delaware Geographic Alliance, 2008 Summer Geography Institute: Beyond Borders. All of the hand-drawn maps follow two simple rules: Each district must be contiguous, meaning that all parts of the district touch each other, by water or by land. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Chapter 14 - Mex America - Chapter 14: MexAmerica Overview - Studocu Borders are political boundaries. In the third category, the relationship ofhousing patternsto the districts boundaries is most important: district tendrils, for example, are less meaningful in sparsely populated areas but more meaningful where the population is densely packed. Weve used counties as a proxy for such communities. "You can't always tell a gerrymander by its shape, but sometimes you can," Li said. What Physical Features Help To Define Political Boundaries? The map effectively cracks Democrats. Once the districts were drawn, we exported them from the app so that we could do our own analysis. Gerrymander districts to favor Republicans Clockwise from top left: weather map, topographic map, political map, digital street map, income map, and geologic map. Occasionally, two countries may contest where a particular border is drawn. Ask students to include a map legend and a compass rose. However, recent years have seen a significant growth in efforts to protect the redistricting process from abuse. The U.S. Constitution requires that each district have about the same population: each federal district within a state must have about the same number of people, each state district within a state must have about the same number of people, and each local district within its jurisdiction must have about the same number of people.

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