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Gerrymandering and Congress

CBL4

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C
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From "No way to run a democracy" in the Sept 16th edition of The Economist:
The other great blot on American democracy—redistricting—has already made a nonsense of elections to Congress. Despite all the hoopla about the 50:50 nation, no more than around 30 seats of the 435 in the House of Representatives are competitive (see article). In 2002, four out of five congressmen won their races by more than 20 points. This is because most states allow their politicians to determine the boundaries. The result is gerrymandering on a grotesque scale, with incumbents stitching up safe seats by drawing absurd districts that look like doughnuts, sandwiches and Rorschach tests.

This is not just unfair; it puts people off voting (why bother in those 400 districts where the result is a foregone conclusion?) and it drives politics to the extremes. With no chance of being unseated by the other party, a congressman's only threat is the partisans in the primary; so Republicans become ever more conservative and Democrats ever more left-wing.
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Here is a link but I think you need to be a subscriber:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3196241

A different article in the same magazine says that there were an average of 100 close races in 1992-6 and 50 in 2000-02.

CBL
 
They recently redrew my district. Its disgusting how they redraw to specifically help the incumbant. They dont even preted to hide that motive.
 
Tmy said:
They recently redrew my district. Its disgusting how they redraw to specifically help the incumbant. They dont even preted to hide that motive.
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Sometimes they redraw to kill the incumbent. The Dems here in Georgia redrew some districts north of Atlanta so as to put two Republican incumbent's residences in the same district and make them run against each other.

They didn't pretend to hide that either.
 
It is a crime... but only if you do it to a racial minority.

Disempowering religious or political minorities is just fine.
 
Gerrymandering is absolute ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊. It seriously calls into question the legitimacy of government. There should be a constitutional amendment abolishing gerrymandering.
 
Yeah, well it would be political suicide for the reps who rely on it to be elected (most of them). Not many people are honest enough to say "Hey, you know what? I have this job because of dishonest policies that existed before I got it: fire me!"

The big problem is, no matter what you do, the gerrymandering victims are still a minority, and unless you're some sort of beloved and sainted figure (and few of them have ever gone into politics), all you will manage to do is piss off the majority voters who were also benefitting from the added political influence their gerrymandered representation grants them. There will never be enough politicians with the sort of political will necessary to pass an ammendment of this nature, since there aren't even enough who have the personal integrity now to READ the bills they vote for.
 
Tony said:
Gerrymandering is absolute bulls**te. It seriously calls into question the legitimacy of government. There should be a constitutional amendment abolishing gerrymandering.
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Agreed.


Does anyone, anywhere offer a workable solution/alternative?
 
Kodiak said:
Does anyone, anywhere offer a workable solution/alternative?
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What do you mean? A solution to gerrymandering or a solution to the issue of congressional disctricts?
 
Tony said:
What do you mean? A solution to gerrymandering or a solution to the issue of congressional disctricts?
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Gerrymandering. (SIIWU...)

An amendment would work, but does anyone have an idea as to how to work it?
 
Our number of representatives per people in each district has changed very little since the founding of the country.

What would be more appropriate is to increase the number of districts. Some districts have only one representative for over a million people. Thats boarderline tyrany.

Breaking up these mega-districts into smaller ones would better represent the people in Congress.
 
Richard G said:
Our number of representatives per people in each district has changed very little since the founding of the country.

What would be more appropriate is to increase the number of districts. Some districts have only one representative for over a million people. Thats boarderline tyrany.

Breaking up these mega-districts into smaller ones would better represent the people in Congress.
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Then you couldn't assign districts based on geography. It would have to rely on population instead, right?
 
Kodiak said:
Gerrymandering. (SIIWU...)

An amendment would work, but does anyone have an idea as to how to work it?
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Work what? I do not understand your line of questioning. It almost seems like you think gerrymandering is a necessity or that there is no way around it (correct me if I'm wrong).
 
Tony said:
Work what? I do not understand your line of questioning. It almost seems like you think gerrymandering is a necessity or that there is no way around it (correct me if I'm wrong).
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Saying "gerrymandering is bu!!$h!+, something must change" is step 1. We're all already there, I think.

Does anyone have step 2?

I hope to hell that there is a way around gerrymandering. I'm just asking if anyone knows of any existing plans, opinions, or theories for an alternative.
 
Kodiak said:
Gerrymandering. (SIIWU...)

An amendment would work, but does anyone have an idea as to how to work it?
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Gerrymandering is possible partially because redistricting legislatures can make the districts as complicated as they want them to be.

Some of this could be alleviated if the district shapes had to be determined by some simplifying rules: A certain number of straight lines, and a curve or two.

This won't really get rid of the problem - it's partially caused because, for instance, Republicans truly outnumber the Democrats (and vice versa) in many states.
 
Go with an independent board. A number of states have. Take it away from the elected pols. ?
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Exactly right. From the same Economist article:
As with so many of the other abuses in American politics, it need not be that way. Just as some states have bought good voting machines, others have redrawn their electoral boundaries in a sensible way. Iowa, for instance, allows an independent commission to set them. Redistricting can be fixed—and it should be. America's devotion to the principle of democracy is admirable—but the principle could be far better honoured in the practice.
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In states with initiatives, the people need to take action to prevent this perversion of democracy. In other states, the losers of the gerrymandering need to use public opinion to change things.

There are a few things to note about this.
1) In many states there was a gentlemen's agreement to protect ALL incumbents but now it is much more partisan.
2) People have produced computer programs to maximize the partisanship of redistricting.
3) Third, the advent of majority black districts has created a few extremely Democratic districts and more moderately Republican districts.

CBL
 
Well in the discrimination cases the legislators have to get the OK from the judicary. The judes make surethey play fair.

Letting the legistlators draw the lines is like letting the fox guard the chicken coup.
 
Proportional representation would fix the problem. Single Transferable Vote seems good, for example.
 
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