Reading of the Supreme Court case concerning Alabama voting districts, the question arose: Do voting districts exist to simplify the election process, or are they intended to give advantages to various groups?
A placed a map of Alabama in a rectangle, found the geometric center, and it was quite easy to divide in into six districts of the same area and one of equal area or two small districts. This would seem to be the answer to arguing about Gerrymandeering.
Districts need to have approximately the same population, not the same area.
Gerrymanding makes this possible?
Equal population districts can be arrived at by any of hundreds of methods, involving potentially millions of different boundaries. (Districts must be contiguous.)
Gerrymandering is a term for setting the boundaries in such a way that your favored party will be guaranteed (or at least greatly expected) to win the vote.
What is a “fair” way to assemble a district is a difficult issue, subject to huge amounts of assumptions, definitions, interpretations, and local issues. “Unfair” ways to assemble districts are in fact much easier to create. The only thing they have in common is that the population, not land area, of all districts must be as close to one another as possible.
Many places do not depend on political partisanship to set electoral boundaries. Up here in Canada gerrymandering is never mentioned because we have no problem defining electoral ridings in a fair way.
Why bother with districting at all?
Elect the state’s 6 reps based on the proportional vote of the whole state and the gerrymander issue disappears into the ether.
As in Australia with our non-partisan AEC. It’s not like it’s a technically difficult task. Just a intransigently political one.
Like Australia, as @penultima_thule informed us, we have in Canada, a nonpartisan body (Elections Canada) that sets riding (i.e. district) boundaries. Politics, politicians, and parties never enter the picture when it comes to setting riding boundaries.
And here in the Soviet of Washington, congressional and legislative districts have been drawn by a (theoretically) independent commission since 1983. In practice, what they come up with seems to be designed to preserve the status quo — which is probably not a bad thing, considering the chicanery taking place elsewhere.
Obviously a non-partisan commission can work fairer than any political-motivated one - and do in several American states.
But what is fair? How do Canadians define the word? Are there any protected classes? Do they ensure representation by minority populations? Compactness alone is a meaningless distinction.
In fact, at first glance, congressional districts don’t have to look at all gerrymandered to be so. Take a look at Alabama’s.
People not intimately familiar with the state’s geography, cities, and demographics might think that map creates compact areas mostly following county borders.
There are many other ways to do so, however. The plaintiffs in the Alabama case presented four possible plans to create a second probable black voting district.
Instead, the Alabama legislature drew up this new map.
That does not create a second black majority district, necessary to give black voters a fair chance of electing two representatives, or 28% of the total, when they are 30% of the population.
What is fair? As I said, it depends on how you define the word.
Congresspeople represent a particular district, they do not each represent the whole state. That is what Senators do.
I’m not sure what you mean by “proportional vote of the whole state” but different districts have different interests – some are rural, some are urban, some are heavily industrial, others have a lot of farming. Also, districts allow ethnic minority votes to have more influence in any district where they might be clustered; without that, all the Congresspeople would mirror only the majority ethnic group in that state.
The Constitution and the Census determine how many Congresscritters per state. How these are determined is, to my understanding, at the whim and behest of the State’s legislature. Most have chosen to run electoral districts which is fair squeeze and gerrymander the shit out of them to game the system which isn’t.
Well there’s some research for you. Education. Silver bullet.
Yes. Well interest singular actually.
Whether the district votes GOP or DEM.
Bluntly, your electoral system is buggered.rogered.kaputski.
But if no alternatives can be imagined stateside, let alone considered or even implemented (albeit they flourish just to the north of you); then you are stuck with what you got and it’s demonstrably unhealthy consequences.
Yes, but that’s then subject to the whim and behest of Congress, which has chosen to mandate single-member districts everywhere. At the time this law was enacted, multi-member districts were invariably some variant of first past the post (separate seats or block voting), so mandatory single-member districts were seen as a civil rights provision to make minority representation easier.
There is a federal bill out there to mandate multi-member districts with one form of proportional representation or another, but I think it’s the kind of thing that gets five cosponsors and goes nowhere.
To wit,
~Max
Nope. Districts are mandated by Federal law. 2 USC 2c
In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress).
Thank you for the correction.
There is no magic bullet here.
Set up an electoral system and over time the vested interests work the intricacies and regulations to seek advantage.
IIRC in 1994 Japan amended their electoral system from multi-member electorates to single representatives for several reasons including to reduce corruption.
At the same time Italy was moving from single member to multi-member districts … to reduce corruption.
But if there is rank disproportion between the (voting) population and the representatives elected then two strategies to redress are proportional representation or non-partisan boundary committees, either, or both.
Well, they don’t define it in the sense that you are asking about. But Elections Canada tries to make sure that each federal riding (again, for our American friends, a “district”) has about 100,000 people in it. Roughly speaking, of course; there can be pluses and minuses to that number, especially since Canada now has 40 million people and only 308 seats in Parliament. Geography, not demographics, plays a large role in how Elections Canada sets riding boundaries
At any rate, Justin Trudeau has nothing to do with federal riding boundaries. Nor do Doug Ford (Ontario), nor Danielle Steele (Alberta), nor any other provincial premier, in the setting of provincial riding boundaries. Each province has a neutral, non-partisan elections body (e.g. Elections Alberta) that looks after elections, and which sets riding boundaries, and which prevents the government of the day from gerrymandering in its favour.
Similarly in the UK: Parliament gives the Boundary Commission the overall criteria to use (the total number of MPs, and the degree of variance from the overall average number of voters in each constituency - currently 5% but with special dispensation for a few islands and sparsely-populated areas), and a set of general principles on how to assemble existing polling station areas into meaningful constituencies. There’s then a process of consultation and argument about “local ties”, use of existing boundaries for local government and economic planning, and so on. Naturally, local political parties will argue for those categories that they think would favour them, but the Commission does not look at voting patterns and the effect of boundary changes on the parties. Their focus is on broadly geographic characteristics: where do people live, shop, work, and so on, and how convenient will it be for people to get to polling stations.
There is a broad duty of promoting equality on all public bodies, but AFAIK no-one has argued that any particular set of proposals disadvantages any one social, racial or other protected group. Maybe we live, work and socialise in a more dispersed way than in the US.
Ahem…
Personally, I would choose the 1st one.
As Patrick says above, the Boundary Commission decides things these days. Although it can be controversial when one or another political party thinks they are being hard done by.
Of course, it wasn’t always thus. Until the Reform Act of 1832 abolished the “rotten boroughs”, so-called because MPs were elected by the whim of a patron, thereby being “in his pocket”, constituencies electing members to the House of Commons did not change to reflect population shifts. In some places, an MP might be elected by only a few voters, while at the same time many new expanding towns, were inadequately represented or not represented at all. For example, before 1832 the town of Manchester, already a large conubation, did not elect its own MPs.
Famously, the constituency of Old Sarum retained its right to elect two MPs while only having three houses and seven electors (All landowning men of course).
But 2 USC 2a(c) provides:
Until a State is redistricted in the manner provided by the law thereof after any apportionment, the Representatives to which such State is entitled under such apportionment shall be elected in the following manner: (1) If there is no change in the number of Representatives, they shall be elected from the districts then prescribed by the law of such State, and if any of them are elected from the State at large they shall continue to be so elected; (2) if there is an increase in the number of Representatives, such additional Representative or Representatives shall be elected from the State at large and the other Representatives from the districts then prescribed by the law of such State; (3) if there is a decrease in the number of Representatives but the number of districts in such State is equal to such decreased number of Representatives, they shall be elected from the districts then prescribed by the law of such State; (4) if there is a decrease in the number of Representatives but the number of districts in such State is less than such number of Representatives, the number of Representatives by which such number of districts is exceeded shall be elected from the State at large and the other Representatives from the districts then prescribed by the law of such State; or (5) if there is a decrease in the number of Representatives and the number of districts in such State exceeds such decreased number of Representatives, they shall be elected from the State at large.