Is the gerrymandering in Ohio and Pennsylvania really all that bad?
States like Pennsylvania which are controlled by GOP, but currently give all their electoral votes to the Democrat. IIRC, such “reforms” are being proposed specifically in those states.
I don’t know about Ohio, but you can see the results of PA district gerrymandering in this Wikipedia article. In a state that has given its electoral votes to the Democratic candidates in the past six elections, and where one senator is a Democrat and the other a Republican, it doesn’t make much sense that the will of the people demands 13 fairly safe Republican districts to only 5 (also fairly safe) Democratic districts.
ETA: There are fair ways to divide up districts, using statistics. One popular method is called the shortest split-line method, and is exactly what it says on the tin: find the shortest set of lines needed to divide each state into the correct number of districts, with approximately equal populations. This would result in a map that looked nothing like the current Congressional district map in Pennsylvania.
12 out of OH’s 16 districts are held by Republicans in a state that votes almost exactly 50/50 between the two parties, and the districts in the Cleveland area were redrawn in the most recent redistricting specifically to force Dennis Kucinich out of office (he was forced into a primary against another Democratic incumbent).
I see. PA would be losing a lot of its power in the Presidential race, though. Currently it is a battleground state (at least it lures GOP candidates, and then Dem candidates). If it went to PR, with the winner getting 12 and the loser 10, it would be the single most worthless state in the country in terms of EVs.
Yup. We also have Hamilton County, and therefore Cincinnati, split right down the middle between OH-01 and OH-02, both of which are mostly rural by area. Meaning that Steve Chabot (of Clinton Impeachment fame) and Jean Schmidt (of calling a 38-year Marine veteran a “coward” fame) get to split the vote in a City with a Democratic mayor and a majority Democratic city council.
Sure, as long as it’s per popular vote and not per voting district, which is what some want to do.
It would be a bad idea for Pennsylvania, but it would be a good idea for the Republican Party to dilute the Democratic vote. The plan would only make any sense if every state did it. Even then, it would probably be a horrible system. For example, a state that has four EVs. Would a candidate have to get 75% of the vote to get that third EV? States with three or five EVs suddenly become more important than states with four or six. That hardly seems democratic.
Not if it were truly proportional, and if people voted their actual preferences (I would actually want to combine a Borda count with Sainte-Laguë or even D’Hondt, but having been a poll inspector, I think it would be too hard to convince people a switch to either of those didn’t mean they were being disenfranchised, let alone both).
If you really want a truly representative system, we could choose Representatives through a Monte Carlo process. Pick N people at random from the population of the state, and each one of them can hand-pick a Representative. On average, this would give exactly the right partisan breakdown, with no penalty at all against third parties: If 5.3% of the population is Libertarian and 2.4% is Green, then you’d get an average of 5.3% and 2.4% of the Representatives being those parties. Now, granted that you’d get the occasional outlier who’s crazy or has extremist views, but the House of Representatives is a large enough body that that shouldn’t be significant.
I’ve heard this argument before, but how would it work in practice? Just because I’m a Libertarian (not really, but assume) doesn’t mean that I support just any old Libertarian for Congress. For example (really) I am a registered Republican, but voted for the Democratic candidate for Congress last month.
Why would the process assume that because 5% of the population in a state with 20 seats in Congress are registered Libertarians, that those 5% want whatever candidate the Libertarian party bosses promote?
This has long been my proposal. It does make district design a higher issue, but that can be handled as well (California is already making adjustments).
You don’t need to assume anything about organized political parties. If you were the lucky voter who got selected, you could pick anyone you wanted. Maybe it’s the guy who officially calls himself a Libertarian. Maybe it’s a guy who calls himself a Democrat. Maybe it’s your cousin Frank who doesn’t identify with any party, but who you think has good horse sense. It could be anyone, and so would represent everyone.
In Democratic primaries, 3/4 of each state’s pledged delegates (i.e. non-Superdelegates) are awarded by congressional district, proportionally (divide the number of votes by the total number of votes for all candidates who got at least 15% of the vote in that district, and round down; any “leftover” delegates are awarded to the candidate(s) with the highest fractional delegate values in that district).
However, caucuses work slightly differently; each precinct caucus gets a certain number of county convention delegates, which are awarded to the candidate(s) (including “uncommitted”) who get at least 15% of the votes at that caucus. The county caucuses do the same thing to award their congressional district level caucus delegates; those delegates then decide how that district’s national convention delegates are awarded (as well as deciding on the state convention delegates, which decide the “at-large” national convention delegates). IIRC, in the Nevada caucus, Clinton got most of the precinct level votes, but by the time they rolled up to the state level, Obama ended up with more national delegates, and both sides claimed that their candidate had “won” Nevada, along with the corresponding claim that this showed that their candidate was more “electable”.
Probably because there is very little crossing of party lines in votes.
Each Representative is supposed to represent the people in a particular area; that way, each area is more likely to have someone sympathetic to “local” concerns. Having all Representatives represent the entire state could cause problems (and yes, I realize there are a number of states where their one Representative covers the entire state); if all of California’s Representatives were from southern California, would they care about northern California’s concerns?
Your numbers would probably change if you re-ran them now, but it’s still a bit scary to think that an election that Obama won by a 3.7% popular vote margin could potentially be 5 close calls away from being thrown into the House of Representatives. Under this system, Romney’s four planes would definitely have had reason to be sent out to states where an EV seemed to be going for Obama by a hair.
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If we’re gonna do something to bring EVs more in line with the popular vote, let’s just do direct popular vote. It’s less manipulable.
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If medium-to-big states were going to move to splitting their EVs, either everyone should do it at once, or the party whose bright idea it was should start with their big states first. If the Dems think it’s a great idea, they can start with NY and CA; if the GOP is pushing it, let them start with Texas.
The question is, “should states be able to,” not, “can states.” You’re missing the point, which you should be able to tell, unless you’re such a positivist you can’t tell the difference.
The trouble with these plans is that it still gives the statewide winner a bonus, Since there are more people living in the urban areas, that could still win the election.
Enter SB723 in Virginia:
Its brilliant. first gerrymander the state to remove as many of the opposition party seats as possible. Then award electoral votes by those districts and then award a bonus for winning most of those districts.
And Toledo, a much smaller city is split between 3 districts, one of which, OH-4, runs all the way down and around the bottom of one of the others, OH-5, until it almost reaches Dayton at the other end of the state. And the other district there is OH-9, which holds onto the edge of Lake Erie, with the only connection between its 2 halves the State Route 2 bridge over Sandusky Bay. It only makes sense, a district should be spread out from Toledo to Cleveland. :rolleyes: