5 ms·

As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candi

As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candidates and let me mark the 24 I want. Yes the ballot will be more complicated, but this way we entirely avoid districting and the process is entirely fair (well until you consider states not being fairly drawn, but that’s one level up).

antishatter 6y ago
That of course defeats the purpose of smaller districts getting a voice and not being crushed by larger districts.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Yes. That’s a feature, not a bug. 10m people in a city should get 10x the say than 1m people in the surrounding rural land. Why would you ever want it to be different other than trying to skew elections towards giving rural residents disproportionate amounts of voting power?
coldcode 6y ago
Likely it means that big cities would get all the reps and the rest of the state gets nothing.
- dhosek 6y ago
  A better route would be proportional representation. You vote for a party-ranked list of candidates, and the top n% of the list gets into office based on the fraction of the vote the party received. Unlike single-member plurality voting, this makes third parties viable.
- jgeada 6y ago
  As that is where most of the people live, why is it wrong? Why does largely unpopulated land get a vote?
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    This. Why do voters living in rural areas get more weight to their votes? This is obviously more pronounced in the Senate, but clearly also a problem in the House.
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
Why stop there? Why do small states get the same number of Senators as large states? All the Senators should just be from California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
- dhosek 6y ago
  The small states getting the same number of senators as large states is partly a legacy of slavery. Interestingly, the constitution explicitly prohibits the 2-senators-per-state rule from being amended away (Article V).
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Can you amend that prohibition?
    - dhosek 6y ago
      Good question. If you want to get into the weeds, there are a couple articles worth looking at: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/CONLAW/unamendable.html http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/CONLAW/unamend... https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5293&context=mulr https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
    - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
      The short answer is yes. The long answer is that the Supreme Court would have to get involved. And they are very reluctant to make any kind of new interpretation of the Constitution for something like this.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        Any answer to the question would be a new interpretation, since the clause hasn’t previously been litigated. But you can clearly amend the powers of the Senate, including abolishing all of them. And/or create a third house of Congress, without equal per-state representation.
xahrepap 6y ago
IMO, lifting the cap on the number of representatives we can have as a nation is the best way to fight this issue. Representatives are supposed to represent the people in their district. If each representative represented no-more than, say, 200k people, then gerrymandering would almost be impossible and the people would be better represented. Yes, we'd have a LOT more representatives. But we also now have the technology to support such a thing. > As a result [of the Reapportionment Act of 1929], the average size of a congressional district has tripled in size—from 210,328 inhabitants based on the 1910 Census, to 710,767 according to the 2010 Census. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  That would help somewhat but all it would do is require more computational power to draw imperfect districts. The fundamentals of gerrymandering do not change with doubling the number of districts. And my proposal is based on the idea that today House reps do not represent their district. Look at people like Pelosi and AOC and Nunes. They represent voters from across the whole country but are only elected in their districts. The debates we have are also largely national, not district-level. Most reps spend little time in their districts. They are national level politicians, so why do we pretend like they are the politicians representing just your neighborhood?

antishatter 6y ago

That of course defeats the purpose of smaller districts getting a voice and not being crushed by larger districts.

IgorPartola 6y ago
Yes. That’s a feature, not a bug. 10m people in a city should get 10x the say than 1m people in the surrounding rural land. Why would you ever want it to be different other than trying to skew elections towards giving rural residents disproportionate amounts of voting power?

coldcode 6y ago

Likely it means that big cities would get all the reps and the rest of the state gets nothing.

dhosek 6y ago
A better route would be proportional representation. You vote for a party-ranked list of candidates, and the top n% of the list gets into office based on the fraction of the vote the party received. Unlike single-member plurality voting, this makes third parties viable.
jgeada 6y ago
As that is where most of the people live, why is it wrong? Why does largely unpopulated land get a vote?
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  This. Why do voters living in rural areas get more weight to their votes? This is obviously more pronounced in the Senate, but clearly also a problem in the House.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

Why stop there? Why do small states get the same number of Senators as large states? All the Senators should just be from California, Texas, New York, and Florida.

dhosek 6y ago
The small states getting the same number of senators as large states is partly a legacy of slavery. Interestingly, the constitution explicitly prohibits the 2-senators-per-state rule from being amended away (Article V).
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Can you amend that prohibition?
  - dhosek 6y ago
    Good question. If you want to get into the weeds, there are a couple articles worth looking at: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/CONLAW/unamendable.html http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/CONLAW/unamend... https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5293&context=mulr https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
  - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
    The short answer is yes. The long answer is that the Supreme Court would have to get involved. And they are very reluctant to make any kind of new interpretation of the Constitution for something like this.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Any answer to the question would be a new interpretation, since the clause hasn’t previously been litigated. But you can clearly amend the powers of the Senate, including abolishing all of them. And/or create a third house of Congress, without equal per-state representation.

xahrepap 6y ago

IMO, lifting the cap on the number of representatives we can have as a nation is the best way to fight this issue. Representatives are supposed to represent the people in their district. If each representative represented no-more than, say, 200k people, then gerrymandering would almost be impossible and the people would be better represented. Yes, we'd have a LOT more representatives. But we also now have the technology to support such a thing. > As a result [of the Reapportionment Act of 1929], the average size of a congressional district has tripled in size—from 210,328 inhabitants based on the 1910 Census, to 710,767 according to the 2010 Census. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929

IgorPartola 6y ago
That would help somewhat but all it would do is require more computational power to draw imperfect districts. The fundamentals of gerrymandering do not change with doubling the number of districts. And my proposal is based on the idea that today House reps do not represent their district. Look at people like Pelosi and AOC and Nunes. They represent voters from across the whole country but are only elected in their districts. The debates we have are also largely national, not district-level. Most reps spend little time in their districts. They are national level politicians, so why do we pretend like they are the politicians representing just your neighborhood?