In this assignment, you will answer three questions to get you to start thinking about legislative politics.
- Define and discuss the following legislative terms: reapportionment, gerrymandering, logrolling, coalition building, filibusters, and riders.
- What are the lawmaking, representation, constituent service, and oversight functions of state legislatures?
- Describe in detail the Legislative process. G Go to http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/ and research a bill that has recently received media attention and examine how local legislators voted on it. Why do you feel the legislators voted the way they did?
WK 5 Critical Thinking Assignment
1. Define and discuss the following legislative terms: reapportionment, gerrymandering, logrolling, coalition building, filibusters, and riders.
Reapportionment: Reapportionment is discussed in legislative terms and is the redistribution of the seats of the United States, with the House of Representatives based on the various changes relevant to the population. Therefore, the changes are recorded by the United States Census conducted every 10 years. Therefore, in the House, the federal law predicts the related requirement based on a total form of 435 seats representing only a single district. Therefore, the changes relevant to the population based on different rates, the number of those 435 seats often held can go up or reach the base, as it can be considered reapportionment.
Gerrymandering: Gerrymandering in United States Politics is likely to be practiced to draw out the various boundaries in the electoral districts. In a particular manner that reveals the political party as it is unfair to deal with an advantage over the rivals. The political or partisan gerrymandering that dilutes the voting power of the member related to the ethnic style or the linguistic minorities. Therefore, this law is mainly consolidated with the Federalist Party Vote, relevant to the few districts to reveal the disproportionate representation of the Democratic-Republicans (Murphy, 2020). This I the practice in order to draw a district the boundaries in order to achieve the political advantage related to the legislators, in order to involve manipulation based on the district to ensure the legislators re-elect the advantage with the party about the mal-appointment in order to create about the electoral districts based on the divergent ratios with the voter’s representatives.
Logrolling: Logrolling is one of the common practices in terms of the United States Congress under the legislative assemblies, which have two parts for the legislators to agree to trade and to vote on the bills that they care for in order to exchange other’s vote on a bill related to the personality. Compared to this, logrolling is one of the best practices related to an exchange of favors, especially related to politics based on the practices of learning about exchanging factors, reciprocal to voting to proposed legislation. Thus, logrolling is considered to be a common thing related to the legislators, which is relatively free of control with the national party leaders in order to try and secure the votes with the bills which are concentrated on sizable benefits with the home districts, spreading the cost in case of the taxpayers within the rest parts of the country. Therefore, in the case of local projects related to a federal fund required to manufacture dams, bridges, highways, job training centers, or in the case of a military base which often pushes through logrolling.
Coalition funding: Coalition funding mainly takes place when the members are shared with the responsibilities to reach the goals, their decisions, and their leadership with energy and enthusiasm to work towards a particular goal related to the coalition to have the potential to earn great success. Filibuster: The filibuster is recognized as a political procedure where all the members of the parliament debate. Thus, this proposed piece of legislation is delayed in order to the prevention of making decisions to develop a proposal. Therefore, the filibuster is a legislative practice based on the parliamentary tactic used by the United States Senates with the minority so that they can grant the concession to withdraw the bills (Smith & Riddick, 2008).
Rider: This is an informal; term based on the non-germane within the Amendment to form a bill. Thus, an amendment to an appropriate bill is often charged with a permanent law to govern the appropriate bills and make specific changes to the permanent laws while governing the program funded by a bill, act, or journal.
2. What are the lawmaking, representation, constituent service, and oversight functions of state legislatures?
The function that states about the state legislatures:
Lawmaking: Based on the state, the Legislative Assembly actually makes a law within the State. Therefore, the law enacted within the Parliament or in the State Legislative can be like a challenge before the court alleging an ultra-vibe to the Constitution. Therefore, in the case of the legislation concerned with consonance based on the principles of natural justice (Myers, 2019).
Representation: This was created with a bicameral legislative branch that gave an equal position relevant to the representation of the State or a Senate, and its representation is likely to be based on the population in order to deal with the policies that are ensured in the House.
Oversight Function of the State Legislature: The primary function of the State Legislatures, like in the case of the Union of the Parliament, is stated as the lawmaking agency. Moreover, in case of the State Legislature is often empowered in order to make specific laws on the State List and the Concurrent List. Therefore, in the case of the Parliament, the Legislative Assemblies have been making rights to develop a law on the subject as mentioned in the Concurrent List (Smith & Riddick, 2008).
3. Describe in detail the Legislative process. Research a bill that has recently received media attention and examine how local legislators voted on it. Why do you feel the legislators voted the way they did?
The legislative process mainly focuses on creating a bill related to the legal aspects of the United States. Therefore, every bill must go on while maintaining the few steps to be followed. Therefore, the bill must be introduced and passed, and the President should sign it. As stated by De Marchi & Laver (2020), when a bill is introduced, it requires it to be introduced to the members of Congress or any state legislature that tells about the constituent form in order to make an introduction to the legislation. Therefore, a bill often consists of a statute, instead based on the act of assembly, the ordinance, or any other measure that can be designed to amend it with the existing statute. Thus, the law is often passed to make an effect both by Congress and shall be approved by the President. Moreover, the legislative process is the method that denotes the primary reason to find out the significance of the bill that became a law in the United States (Bergstrom & Bak-Coleman, 2019).
Therefore, the laws undertake the procedure often followed in the legislative process. Thus the “bill”, refers to the proposal for legislation originating United States House of Representatives or Senate, which passes on themselves with the chamber amended by the member of the chamber with the final voting passage in law. Therefore, in the case of the steady bill, which is often voted by the House of Representatives to come up with the group to vote, the debate begins with the members speaking against the bill, known as “voting time.” Therefore, the method used to pass the legislation is a simple majority or, in this case of, a two-thirds majority. In the case of the simple majority, mainly believed to be a predictable note to learn about those who are present, comparing this with the two-third majority believed to deal with all members of the House and Senate.
References
Bergstrom, C. T., & Bak-Coleman, J. B. (2019). Information gerrymandering in social networks skews collective decision-making.
De Marchi, S., & Laver, M. (2020). Government formation as logrolling in high-dimensional issue spaces. The Journal of Politics, 82(2), 543-558.
Kristof, V., Grossglauser, M., & Thiran, P. (2020, April). War of words: The competitive dynamics of legislative processes. In Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020 (pp. 2803-2809).
Murphy, J. (2020). Towards parliamentary full cycle engagement in the legislative process: innovations and challenges. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 26(3), 469-493.
Myers, A. S. (2019). The Reapportionment Revolution and the Decline of Contested State Legislative Elections: The Case of Rhode Island. New England Journal of Political Science, 11(2).
Smith, G. H., & Riddick, F. M. (2008). Congress in Action (How a Bill Becomes a Law). Wildside Press LLC.
Stoker, J. (2003). Influencing the Legislative Process: How a Bill Becomes A Law. Home Healthcare Now, 21(5), 299.
