Gerrymandering and Congress

[CBL4]

The problem with porportional representation is that the legislator are chosen by the party not the people. I also like having a reasonably local representative.

The advantage is that legaslative seats are proportional to nationwide support. I think that the article says that 52% of the people nationwide voted for a democrat for the house of representatives but the Republicans have a majority.

CBL

 

[evildave]

One workable solution: County Lines.

Don't bust up representation below a minimum level of pre-existing political boundary, like a 'county' or 'parish' level, and insist on straight lines following visible landmarks where densely populated areas subdivided. Along a major highway or boulevard.

Individual county/parish/city/whatever governments will fight to the death to prevent their borders being moved around.

So, if a single city has enough for one representative, you could have INSIDE and OUTSIDE that city be two different districts. Otherwise cut up and order population by county, by some formula based on the latest census and leave it to a computer program to chop up the every ten years when the census data is available.

If everyone can agree on the rules, and the software can be reviewed and proven to follow the rules, simply chop up the representation based on the rules without ANY human mind/hand influencing the decisions.

 

[UserGoogol]

The problem with porportional representation is that the legislator are chosen by the party not the people. I also like having a reasonably local representative.

Single Transferable Vote doesn't have that problem though.

 

[CBL4]

One workable solution: County Lines.

This seems great superficially but the courts have rules that all district must be very close to the same size. In Hawaii, the districts must be plus or minus 1%. It is not feasible to stick to county line and keep them the same size. Also some counties have populations that are over 1 million and need to be split into multiple districts. Unfortunately, once you go away from hard rules like this, politician will muck things up to their parties advantage.

CBL

 

[epepke]

This seems great superficially but the courts have rules that all district must be very close to the same size. In Hawaii, the districts must be plus or minus 1%. It is not feasible to stick to county line and keep them the same size. Also some counties have populations that are over 1 million and need to be split into multiple districts. Unfortunately, once you go away from hard rules like this, politician will muck things up to their parties advantage.

Well, as I suggested rather sarcastically in the 1980s, then, why not let representatives choose their representation arbitrarily? Why go on with the fiction that there are districts that need to be contiguous? Why not just arbitrarily choose from all addresses what makes up the district?