hello there geographers and welcome back to the Mr sin Channel today we are going to be reviewing internal boundaries and go over redistricting and gerrymandering something that impacts us all and yet quite never seems to be at the Forefront of conversation now throughout this unit we have spent time talking about different states and boundaries but today we are going to shift our conversation to look at internal boundaries remember International boundaries are between different states and internal boundaries are boundaries that exist between different subdivisions within a state an example of an internal boundary would be the boundaries of the 50 states of the United States it could also include the United States congressional districts County boundaries City boundaries and even school districts all of these are different types of internal boundaries that serve different functions okay so now that we understand what an internal boundary is it's time to talk about voting districts which is a generic term adopted by the Bureau of census to include a wide variety of small polling areas such as election districts precincts or war that state and local governments create for the purpose of administrating elections essentially a voting district is a geographic area where citizens go to vote districts fluctuate over time as population changes districts may need to be redrawn to better reflect the population of a geographic area the process of redrawing districts is known as redistricting and it happens after the census is conducted every 10 years depending on where you live the responsibility of redrawing the districts is often left to either third party organizations or state legislators for example the majority of European countries use an independent commission to create districts that are Compact and homogeneous the goal here is to make sure that districts are not based on voting preferences however in the United States most districts are created by the state legislator now there are some states that do draw their state and federal districts with an independent commission however these states are in the minority states that use an independent commission are doing this because they're hoping to reduce the impact of gerrymandering to make districts balanced and not intentionally favor one political party over another states that have their state legislators create the boundaries may see higher rates of gerrymandering which is when districts are redrawn in a way to favor one political party over another political party gerrymandering is seen as a way for politicians to pick the voters instead of Voters picking the politician now the term gerrymandering was first used after Elbridge Jerry redistricted voting districts to benefit his part his new District looked like a salamander and eventually people put Jerry's name together with salamander and the term gerrymander came to be over the years politicians have used gerrymandering in different ways in order to keep political power or to gain power in the future to better understand how this works let's look at an example here you can see each box represents a person and the color represents their political party we can see that the blue party has 60 percent of the votes and the red party has 40 percent of the vote if we created our districts based on a perfect representation we would get districts that would look like this notice that three of the districts would go to the blue party and two of the districts would go to the red party but let's say the red party redistricts these districts and gerrymanders them notice that now even though the blue party still has 60 percent of the votes they will now only win two districts while the red party will end up winning three districts even though they only got 40 percent of the vote or let's say that the blue party was in control of redistricting and they decided to gerrymander these districts here you can see that the blue party is still only getting 60 percent of the vote but now notice that they will win all five districts and while the red party still got 40 percent of the vote they'll end up winning none of the districts so you can see the power of internal boundaries when districts are gerrymandered it allows the parties that are gerrymandering the districts to get more seats in government have a larger say and influence over the political decisions being made and create safe districts which are districts where it's almost statistically possible for a different party to win making it so there's little to no competition in an election sometimes politicians use a process known as cracking which is when like-minded voters are spread across many districts this makes it so the like-minded voters are in the minority in each district and reduces the likelihood that their vote will have an impact on an election if we go back to our example of the blue party gerrymandering the districts we can see that this is an example of crack notice how the new districts spread the red voters out between all of the districts causing them to be the minority in each district which ultimately leads to the blue party winning all of the district I do want to note that cracking does not always result in one party winning every District but it is an effective way to reduce the chance of the opposing party winning a district another tactic that we can see is used is called packages where like-minded voters are stacked into just a few districts this may allow the opposing party to win some districts however it'll diminish their overall ability to win in all the other districts we can actually go back to our for example of the red party gerrymandering districts that we looked at earlier in this video as an example of packing when looking at the districts notice that there are two districts that are now all blue this allows the blue party to win those two districts but tips the scale in favor of the red party in all the other districts I also want to highlight that both parties in the United States use gerrymandering to try and get an advantage in elections if we go back in time in the United States and look at previous elections we can see in 2010 that Republicans took control of the majority of State seats thus putting them in charge of redistricting in 2012 Democrats got over 1.1 million more votes but Republicans sent 33 more members to the house which some have claimed was due to gerrymandered District today we can see that many people believe that one of the reasons why Congress has such a low approval rating could be partially because of jerryman for example in 2012 both parties in the United States had an approval rating around 15 percent but 90 percent of house members were re-elected in 2014 Congress of approval rating was around 11 to 14 percent and still 95 percent of members were re-elect now some of these results could be because of name recognition or other variables but many people look at it as a consequence of gerrymandering now some individuals and states have proposed a solution to gerrymandering to use algorithms or independent commissions to create districts instead of state legislators to try and reduce the chance of a district favoring one political party over another but others argue that politicians know their constituents the best and that having a third party committee or algorithm still has the chance of creating a district that favors one party over another so what do you think do you live in a safe District how should redistricting be done what is the best way to handle voting in the state let me know in the comment section down below and while you're down in the comment section don't forget to see if you got the review questions right and hit that subscribe button if you found value in this video also if you need more help with your AP Human Geography studies check out my ultimate review package for more resources on every unit for the class as always I'm Mr sin thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time online