Question

Questions: 1) How much of a threat to democracy and voter participation is gerrymandering? 2) Do the arguments for the voter identification legislation outweigh the arguments against it? 3) Also, voter participation in Texas is among the lowest in the nation. What accounts for the state's low levels of participation? Do you think things would be better if voter participation was higher?

Answer 1

Ans: 1.) Gerrymandering means to manipulate district boundaries in order to build political advantage i favour of one party. this phenomenon majorly works around the state (national) politics at the time of elections and mostly has a negative impact and is harmful with regards to healthy political and election environment.

Based on the above, it is quite evident that gerrymandering is an absolute threat to democracy. some of the impacts have been listed below:

• It in a way creates circumstances that the politicians get more power and they can chose who their voters are going to be. Rather than giving the voters the power on whom they are going to chose.
• It is used to help or hinder the a particular party/politician, which is mostly used in an unfair manner and regardless of the benefit to the larger group.
• This method is largely used for the benefit and upliftment of the political parties and in the process the well being and upliftment of the community may go on a toss, as the primary motto is to favour winning of elections by a politician or political party.

As it hampers the transparency of the election system and does not provide equal rights and participation to the voters to chose their leader or ruling party. It directly hampers the democracy and voter participation rights. as all the process gets filtered and adultrated in the process of gerrymandering.

Ans: 2.) The arguments for and against voter identification legislation could be said to have reached a middle ground, based on the class, category and availability of the voter ID documents and the people participating for voting.

For example, if we talk about arguments 'for voting identification legislation', in that case we can say that its important to have it in place (i.e. a government issued photo ID of the voter or any other photo ID, which is acceptable by the govt. authorities), as it will help to keep a track on the citizens who participated in voting, that there is no duplication and no false or unauthorised voting done with fake identity. Therefore, having a voter identification legislation in place keeps a check on malpractices which arise due to false identity.

On the other hand, if we talk about arguments 'against voting identification legislation', in that case we can say that along with the benefits, it could also hamper the overall participation rate in voting. And may also deprive those sections of the society who are actually affected and should have the right to chose their own ruling party to help them with their concerns. And these include, people with disabilities, elderly people, minority class and low income groups. As they are not able to produce a government ID which is valid for participating in voting.

Ans: 3.) The reasons for voter participation to be low in Texas could be listed as follows:

• one of the identified reasons is the 'demographics', which includes the age and proportion of immigrants in the population. i.e. A major chunk of the population falls in the age group below 18 (who can not vote) and apart from that their is a huge no. of immigrants in the state. Thus making the percentage of population eligible for voting very low already.
• lack of participation or interest in voting by the younger population of the eligible lot. i.e Studies show that the citizens who fall in the age group of 18 to 35 have lower participation in voting (which is a good percentage of the overall population).
• apart, from these, other reasons which are stated by the people at large is the difficult system of voting, which makes it difficult for the common people to participate in voting and caste their votes.

In my opinion, things would get even better for sure if there is increased participation or maximum participation in the voting.As it will give more power to people to bring in the party of their choice to power. It will help in brining about political transparency and upliftment of the larger group. Increased participation of voters will keep a check on the government as it shows the awareness of the general public in the state and thus will help in bringing about the required changes and improvements.