Yet, with every census and subsequent redistricting, districts that are clearly gerry-
mandered are created in some states.
There are numerous ways a political region may be gerrymandered. A common
technique to dilute the voting power of a specific political, ethnic, or racial group
is to divide them among various districts, thereby making them a minority in all.
This is called thewasted vote strategy, because it renders the votes of this specific
bloc effectively meaningless, as they are too dispersed to collectively elect a candi-
date. A second means of limiting the voting power of a specific group is to concen-
trate most of the members into a single district. This political geography enables the
group to elect a candidate they favor, but also limits their representation to a single
district, allowing candidates of the opposition party to win seats in the remaining
districts, where competition has been minimized by the gerrymander. This is called
theexcess vote strategy. Finally,stackingis a strategy that relies on the creation of
unusual, distorted boundaries that are drawn in an effort to concentrate voters based
on party affiliation, race, or economic interests. Such districts may not even be con-
tiguous, but rather may be broken into segments. There are many examples of such
gerrymanders, but some of the more notorious resulting from re-districting after the
census of 2000 are Illinois Congressional District 4, California Congressional Dis-
trict 38, and North Carolina Congressional District 12.
Globalization
A broad process transcending physical and political barriers that results in greater
connectivity, integration, and homogenization of human systems. These systems
may be economic, cultural, social, or political and are influenced by thecultural
diffusionof characteristics and qualities at the internationalscale. Globalization
has occurred at some level for centuries, but over the past several decades appears
to have accelerated, as new mechanisms for the process have emerged. For exam-
ple, the advent of advanced telecommunications technology over the past 50 years,
represented by innovations like satellite television, cellular telephones, and the
Internet, has globalized the flow of information and dramatically enhanced con-
nections across cultures. This in turn has made it possible for trends and practices
from around the world to influence the tastes and behavior of individuals without
those people even leaving their places of residence, a condition that has never held
before in human relations. Changes in globallinguistic geographyhave also
assisted the process of globalization. The emergence of a truly global language,
English, partially as a result of the age ofimperialismwhen first British and later
Americancultural identitywas spread internationally, has provided a common
Globalization 151