Racial Gerrymandering

Introduction

For decades leading up to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislative redistricting bodies created voting districts that disenfranchised minority, but especially black voters, from full participation in the electoral process. These bizarrely shaped, racially gerrymandered districts cracked apart---or tightly packed---minority neighborhoods with the effect of diluting the power of their vote. The NAACP and other progressive civil rights organizations worked tirelessly in the courts and legislatures in the 1960s and 70s to ensure all Americans the right to cast a meaningful ballot, regardless of the voter’s race and ethnicity,

by Edward Blum and Roger Clegg 

Weekly Standard article

Conventional wisdom holds that House and Senate Republicans will suffer steep losses and ultimately control of Congress in 2002 if George W. Bush becomes president. This assertion is easy to support as an historical matter: Most “out-year” elections produce losses for the party of the President.