If there’s one thing that Republican and Democrats can agree on, even today, it’s that gerrymandering electoral district boundaries is a gross perversion of democracy.
If it doesn’t benefit them, that is.
If it benefits them, of course, they’ll say it’s a “necessary realignment to increase the impact of under-represented populations” or some other transparent excuse.
So, when California fiddles its districts and, what do you know?, increases Democrat representation the Republicans all cry and rend their expensive suits decrying such base partisanship.
And, as we’re seeing this week, when Texas gets the itch to increase Republican representation by holding a special session to rearrange their districts, the Democrats all shake their heads and tut about opportunism.
A curse on both their houses.
Gerrymandering is a serious problem no matter who benefits from it in the short-term.
Any electoral system built on single-member electoral districts will have problems with inaccurate representation caused by the distribution of political views not lining up with those districts, and any such system where the State (in the form of the winners of the previous election) can re-draw those boundaries is susceptible to partisan capture by carefully re-engineered boundaries.
And you can’t solve this by making the district boundaries unchangeable, because that would be absurdly unfair to people who have to move between districts or who are stuck in a district where their views are a minority.
So, single-member districts have to go.
This would actually be a huge improvement for accurate representation of the range of actual political views, in addition to blocking gerrymandering.
Multi-member electoral districts would allow for proportional representation of all parties (above a minimum size set by dividing the district’s population by the number of representatives it elects), rather than just representing the plurality view.
For example, while California has 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives the actual seats are currently held by 43 Democrats, 9 Republicans and 0 from other parties.
That’s 83% Democrat, 17% Republican and 0% for all the others.
But actual party registration in California is 46% Democrat, 25% Republican and 29% others.
If our Congressional delegation were an accurate representation of the actual voters’ views, it would have 24 Democrats, 13 Republicans and 15 from other parties.
Texas, to take the other state I picked on above, has 38 seats in the U.S. House, held by 25 Republicans and 13 Democrats, giving 66% Republican to 34% Democrat. But actual party registration in Texas is 47% Democrat, 38% Republican and 14% others.
If Texas’ Congressional delegation were an accurate representation of the actual voters’ views, it would have 17 Democrats, 14 Republicans and 7 from other parties.
That is a substantial difference.
Even if party support stayed the same under a simple proportional system, and I would expect the minor parties to increase their percentages if anything, just between these two states this system would change the makeup of the House of Representatives by -15 Democrats, -7 Republicans and +22 others.
And that, perhaps, tells us why we don’t have proportional representation in the United States: neither of the two major parties stands to gain significantly by it, but both of them together stand to lose a lot from it.
But the people would gain immensely.
We would gain:
- an end to constant gerrymandering
- an end to single-party states
- more accurate representation in the legislatures
And most importantly, we would gain an immense increase in the range of views represented in the legislatures.
And we would lose nothing.; well, nothing of any value.
This is a change that has to be done at the state level, since states set the manner by which their Congressional representatives are chosen as well as how their own legislatures are elected.
So, this should really be at the top of anyone’s priorities for ways to make the country better.
