no really
Congresscritters are there to represent their State, not that sliver of their State wot has been computer-generated for maximum election gain.
So : each party draws a list of X candidates, X being the total congress seats for that State. Everybody votes. Each party gets a %age of their candidates relative to the %age of their votes in the State. The exact candidates within that %age can be determined in any number of ways :
at random. Ancient Athens calling
pre-order. The party sets the rankings of each candidate
voter-order. Upon voting, rank your party’s candidates. Whoever gets the most picks is #1 and so on and so forth
Trial by ordeal. Judicial duels, picking horseshoes out of braziers, getting dunked into nearby ponds and so on… What ?! It’s worked before !
Alternatively, let districts be set in stone. Now, and forever, come what may. It’s how we do it here - AFAIK départements (our districts) haven’t changed since the Revolution. No, not that one. Not *that *one either. The 1789 one fer chrissakes ! When there’s a capital it’s always that one !
Uhh, no they aren’t. I think you’ve confused Congress members with Senators. Or something equally wrong. Frankly it should be an error large enough to inspire you to read more and talk less.
No, I haven’t. Both houses have representatives for their States - at the federal level, who the fuck cares about the special needs of Peoria ? And who *should *?
Alternatively, they could be fighting for a system that makes democratic fucking sense. When 45% of the population of a State votes for Pink, but 70% of the population_number-granted seats go to Green anyway (as in, say, Pennsylvania), something’s gone badly wonky. The State is not being adequately represented.
Point the first - bull hockey. Polictical parties exist to gain and retain power, period. Fair does not enter into their equation.
Point the 2nd - It can’t be done anyway, mostly due to the geographic dispersement of people. Democrats tend to live clustered in high population urban areas, Republicans tend to live everywhere else. That self Gerrymanders Democrats and waters down their voting power:
Doctor Jackson wrote: " Polictical parties exist to gain and retain power, period. Fair does not enter into their equation. "
Fine, in a academic exercise. But in the real world the use of temporary power to consolidate permanent power does tend to bump up against that whole “consent of the governed” thing. Unless you’re going to argue that not being in the street with torches and pitchforks constitutes a form of consent.
Fairness is a legitimate value in a democratic society. If you want a one-party state, there are plenty to choose from. But the record of history is not kind toward them.
And the people of Peoria have a State government to adress their special needs. Tweaking the whole country’s priorities because of what Peoria wants for itself is absurd.
We’ll set aside for the moment the fact that your suggestion will never happen. What it would do is remove Peoria’s right to a voice in federal government, making the feds even more out of touch with local concerns.
By your rationale, your personal concerns aren’t important to the nation as a whole, so your voice should be removed too.
You could also argue that gerrymandering is only a temporary cheat - eventually urban population growth and diversification will break “the camel’s back”, and you can’t box off the overwhelming majority voice, and then it could spell electoral disaster…
Of course, if the Reps were smart they could just embrace things like healthcare-for-all reform, leadership against climate change, etc… haha, that will be the day…
Well this thread is about gerrymandering not the absurd notion of tearing down the entire system and rebuilding it. I’m sure there’s a proportional representation thread around here somewhere if you look.
Nonsense. Peoria is part of a State. The representatives of this State represent Peoria, and (provided they’re faithful representatives) bring its grievances to Congress, along with those of every other city in the State. The representatives don’t need to be Peorians to do that, and putting the special interests of Peoria above those of every other city in the State is some bullshit.
As is, say, mandating the Pentagon buy aaaaall the tanks it doesn’t need nor care to buy just so that the good people of Peoria can keep building tanks. On **your **dime.
Well I wouldn’t say a Special Kobal2 Booze & Video Games Subsidy would be in the general interest of my nation, not as such. Even though I, like, totally deserve one.
Right. As if some Joe Blow from anywhere in California is going to really be concerned what’s going on in Pasadena.
It doesn’t compute that having a representative from every district is putting a particular district over any others, either. If there are more than one district per city, perhaps, but then that’s because it has sufficient population for multiple districts, which is what proportional representation is about.
Congressional districts are already so large that you’re only guaranteed an actual local representative in the densest urban districts.
It depends on how they’re drawn. They can absolutely be made to “crack” a particular city across several districts, diluting its actual representation to near zero.
And sometimes that’s done deliberately. When I was in college, for instance, the campus of Villanova University fell into five different districts, to prevent the student body from forming a voting bloc.
Again, can I get a response to the observation that if all districts were perfectly drawn to reflect the racial makeup of the entire state within a reasonable margin, most districts would produce white winners, certainly fewer minorities that currently. If one tried to predict political or party preference as part of the process, the results would be fairer, but this would only work if the lines drawn were very, very accurate in reflecting racial background and political preference. When everything is a close race, even the slightest success by one party or the other during the redistricting process could produce skewed results.
Having representation at something below state level is pretty much why the House of Representatives exists. In fact, the one remaining unratified amendment from the Bill of Rights was something to make sure that the citizen-to-representative ratio wouldn’t get too high.
Here’s my idea: draw districts normally, and each party designates someone as a candidate for that district (so you don’t have a case of, “Well, technically I represent the northwest corner of California, but I am from the Los Angeles area and that’s the only area I really care about”), but distribute the number of Representatives on a statewide basis, and each party gets to choose a district in a particular order (for example, something similar to the method used to determine how many Representatives each state gets out of the 435 total, using the census).