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AND NOW YOU KNOW

Life gets busy. You don't have time to check for every little thing. Especially since the political landscape gets confusing. What does this mean? What does that mean? How did we get here? How do we go there? This page will help answer some of those questions.

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SO WHAT IS GERRYMANDERING?

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Gerrymandering is a simple concept. However, you first have to know where this comes from. It starts with redistricting.

 

Redistricting simply means that states are responsible for re-establishing where the boundaries are for voting districts. This applies to both the U.S. House of Representatives and the state legislatures.

 

The purpose of redistricting is to account for changes in the population. Per the constitution, this is to be done every ten years and in line with the census (this is also done every tenth year; ex., 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020, etc.)

 

States can decide to redistrict at other times, but this must be done, at a minimum, every ten years.

 

Gerrymandering is when states intentionally manipulate the boundaries to benefit one political party over another. This can be accomplished by knowing where the voters of each political party live. 

​IS THIS LEGAL? Unfortunately, the short answer is yes. Because gerrymandering is done under the guise of the legal process of redistricting, there is not something yet in place to explicitly prevent this from happening.

Because minorities typically vote Democrat, Republicans gerrymander by simply re-establishing Democrat-dominant areas to exclude these populations, or to spread them throughout multiple districts to lessen our voting impact.

UPDATE YOUR VOTE-BY-MAIL REGISTRATION

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If you live in Florida, you may not know that your vote-by-mail registration has expired. A recent law now requires voters to register for vote-by-mail following every election cycle. 

To re-register for vote-by-mail, go to https://dos.fl.gov and near the middle of the page, click on "Voter Registration" and then go to "Register to Vote or Update Your Information."

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