Democracy Matters

What is Gerrymandering? Gerrymandering is a political process in which district boundaries are redrawn to favor one political party over another. It is a form of political exploitation that gives a party an unfair advantage in an election and is, unfortunately, done by both major parties in the United States to maintain their power over legislative districts and seats in Congress. The goal of gerrymandering is to create voting districts that are unequal in size, shape, and demographic by manipulating the boundaries of existing districts to either pack as many members of one political party as possible into a single district or to spread them out in a way that they become a minority in every district. These two contrasting methods are referred to as “packing” and “cracking” “Packing” involves drawing district lines to concentrate as many voters of a particular party or demographic into a single district as possible, ensuring that the other districts are more evenly balanced. The result ...

Sovereignty as Savior: Cherokee Nation’s Delegate to Congress: Colonization is not a tragedy of the past, but an ongoing process. Empowering Indigenous sovereignty is our best tool to prevent the continued degradation of Native American rights. In supporting the Cherokee Nation’s delegate to Congress, we all have the opportunity to uplift sovereign Native American treaty rights. In 1835, the Cherokee Nation signed the Treaty of New Echota with the United States under the Jackson Administration. It is often known as the Removal treaty, since its first article demands that the Cherokee Nation “cede relinquish and convey to the United States all lands owned claimed or possessed by them east of the Mississippi river” for a meager sum of five million dollars (Treaty of New Echota). Signed by a minority group of the Cherokees rather than by their Principal Chief, the treaty was widely unpopular amongst the citizens of the Cherokee Nation. For years, in the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, the nat...