Redistricting seems to be a big problem in democracies. The major existing political players draw up safe districts so they can keep getting re-elected (or get their buddies from the same political party elected), which reduces voter choice and decreases the chances of unseating incumbents.
So how about an idea for redrawing US congressional districts… Use the census data and GIS software to draw districts that contain the required number of people and resemble some uniform geometrical shape (let’s say a square) as closely as possible, taking the power of redistricting out of the land of political bias and putting it into a relatively easy politically neutral formula.
Would this be a good idea? Is there a good reason not to reform the redistricting process? Is there a reason besides the fact that it is against the interests of incumbents that it would never pass?
I agree in principle with the complaint in your post, but not precisely with your solution.
Redistricting should never be incumbents drawing themselves “safe” territories to get re-elected from. Yet in nearly every state that is exactly what it is.
On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons for districts not to have abstract geometric shapes – the idea that a district is not lines on a map but a constituency which is to be represented.
Many of the complaints about gerrymandering have been from communities that just plain have no effective representation, because their interests and concerns are a minority in the district-as-drawn and the representative they end up with is a grandstander for his majority base. This was the problem with the black community in eastern North Carolina prior to the creation of the 1st Congressional District as it stands now – and it makes the original Massachusetts Gerrymander look like a compact simple geometric shape by comparison – but it ensures that close to a million black people do actually have a voice in Congress.
The Congressional District encompassing northern New York State is actually larger in area than any two New England states omitting Maine, or very close to it. And we’re talking New York here – I can only imagine what it must be like to live in some of the midwestern districts, where your Congressman’s home and “local” office is a good two hours away by car.
And the General Assembly in North Carolina has bizarre boundaries, despite the mandate of the State Constitution. If I leave my home and drive three miles in any direction but north, I’ve entered a different State House district; if I drive south ten miles on the main state highway that’s 180 yards from my front door, I pass through four different districts. Our nearest supermarket shares no elected representatives with our home. (And our church, a bit further away, has different state and county representatives than either store or home, though they share a Congressman with the supermarket.)
I believe three things need to done for better congressional representation. In order of importance:[ol][]Non-partisan (not bi-partisan as now) redistricting of House districts. I think Iowa has such a system. Safe seats reduce turnover and encourage candidates to appeal to their base rather than their district as a whole.[]Increase the total number of House seats. We have 435 now. 800 or even 1000 would be much better. More seats allow better representation of all parts of our society.Some sort of ranked voting, to encourage centrist and third-party candidates. Instant run-off or Condorcet voting would both work well. First-past-the-post elections favor two large-tent parties that represent very few people well.[/ol]
It’s a big problem in the USA. In many other countries, gerrymandering’s illegal. One British ex-politician still has a £37m fine hanging over her from a conviction a few years ago.
Redistricting is an invitation to gerrymander, & can’t represent every constituent group, because many are geographically diffuse. Districts cannot ever be homogenous, thus voiding the argument that redistricting is necessary so that each representative represents an equal number of people. The most democratic option is to go to some sort of proportional representation (PR). We already vote for parties, no use denying it.
I think my state should reorganise as follows:
Lower House: Pure party-list PR. It’s the bloody simplest & fairest; people can understand it. Attempts to elect individuals proportionally are cute, but mathematically complex, & don’t really reflect how or why we vote anyway. Upper House: Old-fashioned State Senate, one Senator from each county. Reynolds v. Sims needs a challenge. It is better to represent coherent districts that share a geographic & administrative identity than to pretend to be representing equal groups of people with constantly redrawn districts which cannot ever be homogenous, & which correspond to nothing else.
Would the legislature go for it? Of course not. But my state constitution can be changed by referendum.
I agree about the geographically diffuse constituent groups: it makes it very difficult for a geographical district, regardless of how it’s drawn, to actually represent the group. Likewise, your ideas about Proportional Rep. make sense.
What I don’t understand is how non-homogenous districts make it impossible for each representative to represent an equal number of people. Non-homogenous in terms of what? Ethnic/racial makeup, sheer population size? Population growth rate? Could you clarify a little?
We can eliminate gerrymandering if we adopt the multi-member district form of proportional representation: Instead of each congressional district electing one representative by a winner-take-all plurality vote, we stitch five or ten existing districts together into one big district, which elects a five- or ten-member delegation by the single-transferable-vote method. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) for an explanation.) This means even minority-party voters within that district (be they Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian) will help elect at least one representative. It makes gerrymandering pointless.
I agree the way to go is to elect the House proportionally but see no reason to draw any more than 2 districts. If a state only has 2 Reps then divide the state in half. Do the same if it has more than 20 Reps. And increasing the size of the House isn’t a bad idea either though I think 800 is near the outer limit. I think 650-700 is more managable. Remember, the larger the House the more complex and less opaque it is as well.
Alternatively, if we have to stick to single member districts, there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent the federal government from doing the redistricting. The Census Bureau might draw the lines.
You’ve set a real Google challenge there. I can’t find anthing at all about the illegality of it, other than the minimal Wikipedia article. However, my hunch is that it’s only comparitively recently that it’s become a real danger (apart from isolated incidents), due to our vastly-improved understanding of demographics and of voting habits.
Regretfully, I must suggest you are taking your personal sample (the U.S.) and extrapolating it to all democracies.
It’s only a problem in democracies in which the elected officials do the re-districting, and are permitted to take political interests into account. That’s certainly not the case in other systems.
For example, here in Canada the elected officials set the laws to govern re-districting, but then assign the task to non-partisan bodies, normally chaired by a superior court judge, who are not to take past voting practices into account, only the census numbers.
Every time there is re-districting under this system, there’s some grumbling about some of the lines, but by and large, there is general acceptance that the electoral map is non-partisan.
You still don’t get it. I guess I’m not being clear. I originally said that I “see no reason to draw any more than 2 districts. If a state only has 2 Reps then divide the state in half. Do the same if it has more than 20 Reps.” Both situations call for dividing the state in half, thus there are 2 districts. If there are more than 20 Reps they would be multimember districts with at least 10 members each and if there are only 2 Reps there will be 2 single member districts. There will never be more than 2 districts though there may be only one. If there are three to 19 Reps they would be elected in a single multimember district and if the state only has a single Representative there would be just a simple election. For my part, I don’t believe that a 2 member district is the way to go. I don’t see that it represents public opinion better than 2 single member districts.
Wouldn’t the 2-district plan disenfrancise rural voters? Thinking of CA, if you were going to have 2 districts with equal numbers of people, one would have to contain the LA area and the other the SF-San Jose-Oakland area. Then in each district the candidates would focus on the urban centers where most of the voters are. I think there may be something to geographically divided districts…
Certainly not. People organized by geography could win representation under a proportional system. Better yet they couldn’t deny representation to other people organized by by whatever principle they choose. An equal footing for every group. What could be more fair?
Sure they could win representation, but are they realistically going to?
The U.S. in 1990 had about 75% of the population living in urban areas, and in some states the divide was huge: New Jersey had 89% of its population in urban areas, Illinois and Florida 85%, Texas 80% and California 93%! Wouldn’t rural voters be ignored in these states in a stampede to win votes in the cities?
Although you do have a point about geography having no more power to determine representation than other factors. But if that’s so important, why divide a state into any districts at all? Why not go past two and just have one district for the entire state?
It would make a certain amount of sense to have one house of the legislature represented geographically by districts, and the other represented proportionally, with no regard to geography.
First off, I seriously doubt that 75% of Americans in 1990 did live in urban areas. I imagine that includes the suburbs which isn’t the same thing at all. But still, they are all nonrural. So how can a mere 25% or 15% or even 7% of the population be represented? The same way my little self, all .0000000000001% of the population of my state, can be represented. By organizing with likeminded people. Of course, there isn’t anyone exactly like me so organizing requires compromise on priorities.
The problem is voting complexity. Right now California has 53 Representatives. Think about what a multi-party party list ballot with the option of voting below the line would look like for a district that size. And I think we should expand the House by adding over 250 more seats. This is why districting is necessary. In fact, I’ve been thinking about this over the last week and even simply dividing California in half would still leave the ballot too unwieldy. I now favor drawing multimember districts once a state has more than 23 seats.
Well, electing the House proportionally would accomplish most of that goal. It would still be elected proportionally based on geography because it would be by state. But the Senators would remain in single member districts so Congress would be half ( mostly ) proportional and half strictly geographic.