The gerrymandering of U. S. Congressional districts has been a major topic of discussion as late. That it exists is not in question. (Look at the map of North Carolina for a prime example.) That it has an effect is obvious. Acoording to this, the Democrats would hold 8-12 more seats without it. But the biggest problem is not tilting the balance between the parties, but rather protecting incumbents. Careful slicing up of states into districts helps incumbents ensure that they can’t be defeated even if a considerable portion of their constituents move against them. Consequently we get less accountability from members of Congress, leading to more pork and corruption.
It’s tough to fix the problem because neither party will take the lead, because it’s not in their interests to do so. If the Dems redistributed districts in the blue states fairly, they’d stand to lose votes overall. If the Pubs redistributed districts in the red states fairly, they’d also lose seats in total. So members of either party may say that they want an end to gerrymandering, put a prisoner’s dilemma-type situation ensures that it won’t happen.
I have a solution that would start with the two biggest problem states: California and Texas. The former has a majority of protected Dem incumbents, the later a majority of protected Pub incumbents. California would pass a law stating that in 2010, the districts would be redrawn according to a strictly defined computer algorithm. However, the redraw wouldn’t actually go into effect until Texas agreed to redraw its districts according to the same algorithm. That way both parties lose some protected incumbencies, but it’s a trade-off without a large net benefit in one direction. Meanwhile we advance towards the common goal of more accountability from representatives. Other states might follow, where in each case a state dominated by one party redraws its districts but names a partner state from the other party that also has to redraw in order for it to go into effect.
Why not just scrap the single-member-district system entirely? The Constitution doesn’t require it. State constitutions do but they’re easier to amend. A multi-member-district form of proportional representation would make gerrymanding pointless/impossible.
For the record, North Carolina’s districts are drawn the way they are because they need to be pre-approved by the U.S. Department of Justice, thanks to long-past discriminatory practices. Two districts are drawn in such a manner as to yield black majorities; the others are constructed around them. Granted that it looks like an orgy of Elbridge-newts, it’s done that way for justifiable reasons only quasi-political in character. (Yes, I do find it a bit peculiar that I would have needed to wade through a swamp to get from one half of the State Senate district I was for a few years to the other half without leaving the district for about five miles of highway. That one, I think is probably bad districting. And it’s no longer in place.)
And one minor rant: it’s been asked many times before – when you link to a PDF, a multi-megabyte video, or similar downloadable file, have the common decency to put in a warning.
It won’t happen. Americans are too wedded to the notion of a Representative as a glorified alderman, someone who can help you out if you’re having problems with the Veterans Administration or the Department of Agriculture. Americans will never give up the principle of having a “personal” Congressman.
Most voters aren’t as ideological as the posters on this Board–they want to evaluate candidates as individuals, not as members of a “party list”. Casting a vote for the Democratic “slate”, not even knowing which 8 or 10 or 12 people on the slate will end up going to Washington, is completely alien to the American tradition.
That’s the advantage of the multi-member-district system – it retains that. Merge ten single-member-districts into one big district with a ten-member delegation, and now you have ten “personal” Congresscritters, almost certainly including at least one you voted for or approve of or agree with politically. Somebody you can really talk to about your problem. As things stand now, “your” Congresscritter might be the guy you campaigned against last year.
Straight-ticket voting has long been in decline in American politics, and my state doesn’t even allow you to vote a straight ticket with a single touch or punch or lever pull any more.
Of course, you can still vote individually for all of the candidates of a particular party if you’re so inclined, and I’m sure some people still do. But this form of “straight ticket” voting is a far cry from the European or Israeli-style “party list”. You still have individual candidates running for individual offices, and you can withhold your vote if a particular candidate is touched by scandal or incompetence. Furthermore, the candidates are nominated in primaries in which anyone can run, which serve as de facto “first round” elections.
Contrast this with the European or Israeli model in which the party leadership nominates a ranked list of candidates for the legislature, and you vote for the slate with no ability to exclude individuals and no knowledge of how many people on the slate are going to win. This is the model of voting which is alien to the American tradition.
Proportional representation for each state wouldn’t solve the problem of protected incumbents; if anything, it would make that problem worse. Let’s say that California has a stack of 30 Democrat representatives. Knowing that California leans Democratic, they would stand to lose at worst three or four of those Representatives in any given election. Thus most of those 30 would be totally sure of re-election.
And, the job of drawing up that algorithm/program would be filled with party politics. :dubious:
There simply isn’t any easy way to end gerrymandering. In fact, a little gerrymandering is a good thing- congresspeople should represent a community or group of communities, which borders may not be best defined by straight lines.
Yes. There was a time, you see, when the voters simply dropped a piece of paper in the ballot box. If you were a loyal partisan you could get a preprinted ballot, a “ticket”, from your local party workers, naming all that party’s candidates in that particular election; you would drop that form in the ballot box, thus “voting the straight ticket.” Or you could get a blank piece of paper and make more nuanced selections on it. I don’t believe the pollworkers provided you with a printed fill-in-the-blanks form in those days.
Sure there is. The Iowa system is much less political than that of other states, and results in districts which are much more reasonably shaped and more politically competitive.
That’s correct; the phrases “on the ticket” and “straight ticket” derive from the days when parties printed voting tickets, before the state-printed “Australian ballot” listing all of the candidates and offices. In fact, the Australian ballot is an often-overlooked factor in the decline of third parties in America, because it required states to adopt laws governing ballot access, and those laws invariably made it more difficult for outsider parties.
Anyway . . . this started as a discussion of gerrymandering. And my point is that while it’s true that PR would get rid of gerrymandering, it would bring in a lot of other baggage that will spur resistance from a lot of voters.
The “path of least resistance” to get rid of gerrymandering is to retain districts, but draw them in a less partisan manner. As we saw last year in California, it isn’t a path of no resistance, but it’s less of a change than multi-member districts and party lists.
Honest question: What does it mean to have non-gerrymandered districts? Suppose a state was 60-40 Democratic, with 10 districts. Should each district have a 60-40 partisan split? Then you’d wind up with 10 Democrats in the House. Should you shoot for getting 6 Democrats and 4 Republicans in? Should you try to maximize the number of competitive districts (for example, by creating 2 100% Democratic districts and 8 50-50 districts)? Is it better to have all the minority voters spread out among several districts? Or better to ensure that they have at least one district where a candidate of their choice gets elected? It seems like it’s important to state what the end goal is before running around “fixing” things.
None of the above. The criteria for districting should be (1) population equality (already required); (2) contiguity (already required); (3) compactness (which can be mathematically measured; (4) following county and city boundaries to the extent not inconsistent with the previous objectives; and (5) consistency with existing districts, especially on later iterations where you’re beginning with non-gerrymandered districts and want to minimize change.
This is not an answer to his question; this is an algorithm, not an end goal. Do we care to specualate what the end result of this scheme would be, and whether that result would be desirable?
Oddly, the Australian ballot did not have that effect in Australia. In the US, I think it’s a combination of needing to have some limit on ballot access, plus the two main parties having more control over the whole electoral process.
In Australia, with the “Australian ballot”, minor parties flourish. That’s because many legislative chambers use proportional representation, and all use a preferential alternative votive system.
I suspect that a secret ballot and printed ballot papers listing all the candidates go hand in hand. It’s much easier to have one if you have the other.
Of course it’s an answer to his question. He asked what it would mean to have non-gerrymandered districts, and I answered.
As for the partisan result in his hypothetical 60-40 state, I have no idea. It would depend on how the 60 and the 40 were distributed geographically. The principle behind districting is that candidates represent a part of a state, not the entire state, so the statewide partisan split is irrelevant.
This article on voting in Vermont does a good job of explaining the distinction:
The association of Australian ballots with secrecy isn’t entirely wrong. They tend to be more secret than pre-printed tickets. With pre-printed tickets, for example, machine bosses could hand out the tickets and watch to make sure voters carried them into the polling place, even if they didn’t actually watch them deposit them in the box. I don’t know how common that was, but it was at least theoretically possible.
