GVPT 170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Incumbent

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Government and Politics
• Course: GVPT 170
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Congression basis (2) u. s. senate rural/urban terms (1) u. s. house of representatives. Differences between the house & senate (cont. ) Definition: allocation of house seats to the states after each census. Definition: drawing new boundaries of congressional districts. Responsibility of state legislatures in most states, but increasingly calls to reform the process to make it less partisan by using bipartisan commissions. Definition: drawing boundaries of congressional districts in order to advantage some partisan or political interest. Used to create majority-minority districts to guarantee equal political rights for minorites. Key: in order to provide equal opportunity for minority voters preferred candidates to be elected, minority voters must be the majority in that congressional district. Key us supreme court rulings on majority-minority congressional districts. A district created on no basis other than to include a majority of minorities might raise constitutional questions . Race can be considered but can not be the predominant factor .