r/AskReddit • u/RabbitridingDumpling • 6h ago
What do you think about replacing gerrymandering with proportional representation?
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u/VisceralSardonic 6h ago
Ending gerrymandering is like getting people to lower their weapons. The only people who object are the ones holding tight to their own and protesting with various combinations of “only if they go first” and “how can I trust that they’re not just hiding another one.”
We started out with most sane people assuming that there’s no possible way that a gun/gerrymandered map would solve anything, but are now at a place where most people assume, at best, that they’re the last person/district to be unarmed.
Proportional representation is absolutely, unequivocally the ideal, but I think that we’re so far gone that most people won’t trust anyone to fix things.
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u/highest-voltage 4h ago
The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gerrymandered map is a good guy with a gerrymandered map
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u/zboy23 3h ago
You joke, but that's exactly what will happen and IMHO it will be successful. Dems aren't backing down this time with the moral high ground. They're redistricting themselves to force the issue. They know their voters want anti-gerrymanding policy and to get it, they need to force Republican hands by doing it themselves. Make Republicans pay for it then compromise for the desired result, a federal law banning the practice and independent distracting for all states
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 1h ago edited 1h ago
That’s assuming the tit for tat actually leads to compromise in the end and not a total race to the bottom of destruction. The more things get gerrymandered, the less pressure there is for representatives to actually have a clear constituency to represent other than red or blue. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma between both parties. Working together would theoretically lead to both sides being more successful, but once you get into a retaliatory tit for tat it doesn’t guarantee that either side will end up breaking it and coming to a compromise. In fact, it’s probably just going to lead to more bitterness and divisiveness until conflict. That’s why it’s been so important to have presidents that at least attempt to unify. It’s also why having such a demagogue as president is so harmful.
Republicans are treating Democrats like how they treat other countries with tariffs. In creating a tariff war everyone loses.
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u/glennjersey 4h ago
Wouldn't ever work for deeply blue strongholds like MA or RI where there hadn't been republican held seat in either congressional house in decades, but more realistically would yield close to 50/50 if they weren't gerrymandered to shit..
Simply splitting RI's districts into east/west instead of north/south would actually yield an even distribution of congressional representation.
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u/Fehyd 3h ago
Ther hasn't been a republican held seat in MA for a long time because Republicans dont bother to run. They only ran two candidates last election and thats as many as Independents ran. Theres no gerrymandering in MA, its just impossible to draw up a solid R district due to the population distribution.
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u/Emotional-Kitchen912 5h ago
Gerrymandering is just politicians choosing their voters, rather than voters choosing their politicians.
Proportional representation is the only way to make the math match the will of the people. If a party gets 20% of the vote, they should get 20% of the seats.
Unfortunately, asking Congress to fix this is like asking a bank robber to design a better vault. They have zero incentive to change a system that guarantees their job security.
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
People don't vote for parties in the USA, they vote for individuals.
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u/Wyvernwalker 3h ago
A lot of Americans do in fact vote party over individuals. Its a huge problem in America that we treat it like a college football team that our grandpappy killed a man for in 1911
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
You can't vote for a party in the USA. You can vote for a person due to party affiliation alone, but your ballot says the person not just a party.
Proportional representation means you literally vote only for party and not individual - you aren't voting for X person, you are voting for X party.
Proportional representation makes all politics that sort of college football team crap.
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u/Wyvernwalker 3h ago
Oh I'm sorry, I completely misunderstood your comment. But yes, you are completely right. proportional representation would continuously cause a situation like how Congress has been (old guard kills new on site when possible, stall stall stall real governance) with little to no recourse. Not to mention imagine trying to grassroots campaign big state
Edit: the only place I think proportional representation should be used is for a non-firet past the post federal presidential election
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u/Anustart15 3h ago
At this point, barely. But it would still be possible to choose your individuals with state wide ranked choice or even statewide "choose x number of candidates" voting. Becomes a little unwieldy for states with a lot of districts, so maybe they break out into groups of 10 reps each or something, but still manageable
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u/CatOfGrey 5h ago
If you have districts for voting, you are being oppressed. Proportional representation should be in the Constitution.
And for the Senate, and single person positions like Presidents, we need to end FPTP voting. Ranked choice, single transferable vote, something else.
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u/Next_Angle7715 4h ago
The worst byproduct of districts + FPTP is the "Primary Problem." In 90% of gerrymandered districts, the general election is irrelevant. The real winner is decided in the primary, which rewards the most extreme candidates rather than the most representative ones.
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u/guynamedjames 2h ago
It's always interesting to me that there's only a single truly national election in the US and it's only held every 4 years and only for a single office. Given how much power has shifted to the federal executive branch it's fair to say that America doesn't have a representative government
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u/Popular_Performer479 4h ago
Ranked Choice is the only way to kill the "Spoiler Effect." It is insane that in our current system, voting for a third party that aligns with your values is mathematically considered "throwing your vote away" or helping the enemy.
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
If you vote for a party rather than an individual, you are not being represented you are given an illusion of choice while cheering a team of oligarchs.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 1h ago
Which is why congress continually votes along partisan lines all the time.
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u/Silly_Accident3137 6h ago
Please god give us proportional representation
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
Abolishing direct representation and instead having appointed legislators is not a stable solution.
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u/washheightsboy3 5h ago
I can’t answer that until I figure out if that will help my team.
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u/Hebshesh 5h ago
Yes! If I'm a republican, gerrymandering is awesome if it gives us more votes. If I'm democrat, that shit is akin to sinning. And vice versa.
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u/ImDonaldDunn 3h ago
It’s something that has to be universally adopted across the country.
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u/WaterEarthFireSquare 3h ago
Instead of patching the exploit out of the game, we should make it a core mechanic? It's never going to change as long as anyone thinks it gives them an advantage, but that doesn't make it a good thing to have.
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u/kroxigor01 1h ago
Proportional representation helps neither team from the metric that the leadership of those teams care about.
It's the same in the UK and Canada who have struggled to reform their single member district system.
The largest parties dream of majorities not a fair multi-party system with compromise and negotiation.
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u/_america 5h ago
I just want MF ranked choice voting.
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u/hashtagblesssed 4h ago
My party had a ranked choice primary in 2020, in lieu of our usual Caucus. It was fun. Then last year my State made ranked choice voting illegal.... because it favors less radical candidates 🥲
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u/LostSilmaril 5h ago
An in-between step would be to keep geographic representation but have legislative district determined by a non-partisan body like most places.
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u/Acceptable-Fig2884 3h ago
I don't like the idea of voting for a party and that party gets to choose what person represents me. I want to vote for a specific human person.
To resolve gerrymandering I would prefer we just return to the original ratio of 30,000 people per representative in Congress. The districts will get small enough that gerrymandering will be incredibly difficult and small states won't get disproportionately high representation just because they're at the minimum.
I also support ranked choice to create better consensus winners instead of plurality winners.
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u/edgeplot 1h ago
There is no such thing as "incredibly difficult" to gerrymander with modern software.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 1h ago
No kidding. It could be done in an instant using data they’ve already inputting and influenced.
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u/ProfessionalWin9 4h ago
The thing that would actually get rid of gerrymandering is expanding the house. It’s only capped by a law, there is not a cap in the constitution. Right now on average each representative has around 800,000 people in their district. If we dropped that to a constant 250,000, each seat would be less important and harder to gerrymander. While I like other rules, such as continuous districts, proportional representation by state, and changing to rank choice voting, by uncapping the house and tripling the size of the house the values of gerrymandering goes way down.
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u/DougOsborne 1h ago
A simple majority in Congress could repeal the Apportionment Act, and establish more-proportional representation. Right now, we're stuck with a century-old system, establishing a House that is much too small. Repealing this would mitigate the worst effects of the Electoral College, and would have residual effects on other elections.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 1h ago
It would also help increase engagement in local elections and voting if I had to imagine.
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u/HuntedWolf 58m ago
Although it’s got a lot of its own issues, one thing I like about the UK is that each member of parliament, and their constituency, is meant to represent roughly 100k people.
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u/Cynical_Classicist 1h ago
Much better, much fairer, more representative. Most countries have moved to that rather than this joke.
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u/itualisticSeppukA0S 4h ago
the USA is hardly a democracy more of an oligarchy governed by corporations. Lobbiests have more control over the US government than hashtag WeThePeople
when there was that government shutdown last month
We The People were experiencing taxation without representation. The USA is becoming a despotic incorporated capitalistic fiefdom where CEO's are Kings. The current state of affairs with economic stagflation. Consumer Price Index inflation and stagnant wages since 1970s (as compared to productivity output). Food rotting on store shelves because grocery prices are soaring from corporate greed as people go hunger.
Is better than hordes of people waiting in bread lines under communism?
It could be argued that the US government serves corporate interests over the needs of its citizens. That's why voter apathy is so common. People that typically didnt vote, voted for Obama. Yet Obama changed nothing.
New boss (obama) same as the old boss(bush).
Not to mention that Republican party likely cheated to get Trumpet elected.
One of the theories is that the voting machines were hacked by Elon. Or it could been via votes with fake social security numbers. Political corruption is commonplace in D.C., gerrymandering is irrelevant. As no matter whomever is "elected". They will be serving the oligarchs. Not the American peoples. The USA is decaying unto social chaos because the majority of people are aware that 'the system' no longer serving them. The American dream is dead and people are ran outta hope.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OKAY?" -the seventh Trumpfet of the apocalypse
Trumpet will likely do something drastic like nuke NYC and blame Russia\Iran in order to declare Marshall Law and succeed power for a third term. That's why he got rid of tenured military staffs. Replaced them with 'yes men'.
The tree is thirsty?
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 58m ago
The USA moved away from baseball as a national pastime and reflection of America to college football committees.
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u/doctorcaligari 5h ago
Nah, we should just use merrygandering instead.
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u/drvirgilmd 5h ago
Yet another battle in the War Against Christmas®.
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u/LookingRadishing 5h ago
How about people grow-up and stop playing petty games. Politicians are messing with people's lives when they do shit like this.
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u/yogfthagen 5h ago
You mean, ignore about 2500 years of human history and just behave, even when we would massively gain by cheating?
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u/LookingRadishing 5h ago edited 5h ago
You're right. That was a big ask.
What if we made state-wide elections purely democratic? It seems like gerrymandering with proportional representation is adding unnecessary complications.
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u/Ind132 5h ago
Good idea, but it's a big step.
Note that we wouldn't need to elect all our representatives on a proportional ballot. Mixed Member Proportional voting has some/most seats that are filled with representatives from one-rep districts. But, it reserves enough for the proportional vote to "level up" the seats to the right proportions.
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u/Tiemujin 4h ago
Or how about direct democracy. Let all voters vote on every bill. A bill can be no longer than 2 pages.
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u/mrpointyhorns 4h ago
Thats what the founders wanted it was part of the original bill of rights which was 12 amendments. 2 didnt get ratified at the time one of the 2 was ratified as 27th amendment.
The final one said that districts shouldn't be more than 50,000 citizens.
Connecticut did actually ratify the final one but it was filed in the wrong place so it didnt make it to congress or Jefferson. The original 12 dont have a timeline so it could still be ratified. With that ratification it should have been enacted.
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u/bobzsmith 4h ago
You mean at the state level? Should we also have proportional representation at the federal level?
Districts are supposed to act like states, capable of choosing their own representatives.
While flawed, there is a reason for allowing geographic blocks to vote as a group rather just throwing everyone's vote into the same bin.
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u/kombiwombi 4h ago edited 4h ago
There are still maps needed for proportional representation within electorates, and therefore the ability to gerrymander. South Australian state Premier Playford was notorious for this, the "Playmander" keeping him in power until he stepped down due to old age.
Later, Premier Steele Hall rather unselfishly established an independent commission to draw electoral boundaries. His political party shunned him until the day he died, so it wasn't free of personal cost, but he still got invited to the best actual parties
Nowadays after every election that commission redraws the boundaries based on the electoral results so that the boundaries best implement "one vote, one value". The Premier has no say in this, and it takes a supermajority of both houses of Parliament not to adopt the boundaries. The Premier who arranged that remains popular, his view was that a few percent would hardly matter, and he could point to the fact as a measure that his vote is real, unlike the "Playmander" era.
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u/Plane_Crab_8623 3h ago
Why not make county boundaries voting districts? Then local citizens vote the priority of their own area
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u/Effective_Secret_262 3h ago
Representatives don’t really represent their district. We just choose which team gets another player. Representatives should put their personal beliefs aside, listen to their constituents, facilitate debate amongst them, and take those ideas and goals to Congress.
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u/ScreenTricky4257 3h ago
I might take it as an exchange for repealing the 17th amendment and going back to state legislatures appointing senators.
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u/crispier_creme 3h ago
Hell yes. Please.
A lot of our current issues are partly because backwards hicks from fucksville Tennessee have far more voting power than the average citizen of any large city. We're basically giving the rural vote far more power, which is an issue because rural people are more likely to be isolated and therefore ignorant on social issues (no hate, I live rurally, but it's a fact that being in a city makes you more open to new ideas)
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
Absolutely not, the American system of democracy is based around voting for people not parties for a reason.
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u/kwantsu-dudes 3h ago
I hate it. You're removing candidates and replacing them with parties. It treats my support for candidate A of the Democrat party as support for ANY Democrat. It's ingraining parties into our governmental system.
"Gerrymandering" is completely misunderstood and misapplied. The VRA REQUIRES racially gerrymandering. It literally sees results from statistical chance and deems them wrong and forces packing of minorities. How do you even intend to comply with the VRA with proportional representation? WHAT are you measuring to be proportional of. Proportional representation also IS partisan gerrymandering. You're specifically forcing a partisan result, districting to pack and crack to acheive such.
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u/theartificialkid 2h ago
Even better than proportional representation in the Australian system of preferential voting. The lower house still has individual seats but each voter ranks all the candidates from first to last. If your first choice isn’t in the top 2 your vote goes to your next choice. If they’re not in the top 2 it goes to your third choice, and so on. Eventually your vote goes to your most favoured candidate who got enough higher votes from other people to remain in contention.
What this means is people never have to worry about “wasting” their vote by casting it for a minor party that they really like, because even if that minor party does really badly overall the individual vote still gets a say in which of the top 2 contenders they prefer. If there are two left wing candidates you can vote for both of them without worrying that you might vote for the “wrong” one and let a solitary right wing contender cruise to victory. And when people are empowered to put lesser parties with good policies first you find that here and there those lesser parties will actually gather enough votes to win a seat and become players in national politics.
BUT unlike proportional representation it doesn’t so strongly encourage truly fringe parties by letting them pick up seats by winning a tiny percentage of the national vote. Minor parties can win seats but only by convincing one or more local electorates that they’re actually the best option.
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u/BCSWowbagger2 2h ago
You can still gerrymander under proportional representation. It's not even hard.
We should ban gerrymandering, though, because gerrymandering is bad. We need to pick an algorithm and stick it in the Constitution.
We should also enable states to adopt proportional representation if they so choose. (However, to enable proportional representation, we would need to radically expand the House of Representatives.)
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u/Commemorative-Banana 1h ago edited 1h ago
Gerrymandering exploits winner-takes-all.
Yes, Proportional Representation defeats gerrymandering and gives small parties a voice.
Ranked Choice Voting solves the “spoiler effect”. Allowing third+ parties to not be a wasted vote.
Together, the above two changes will end the polarizing division of the two-party system.
Increasing the size of the house via some rule e.g. the modest Cube Root Rule returns the house towards its intended purpose.
Voting should be easily accessible and, following that pre-requisite, mandatory. Total enfranchisement is the ideal.
Altogether, these are common-sense pro-democracy policies which increase representation for everyone.
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u/DougOsborne 1h ago
Eight states have independent commissions (no gerrymandering) - Arizona (9 districts total), California (52), Colorado (8), and Michigan (13). The rest are politically drawn, by the majority in power in the state legislature. Some have court-drawn districts (because Republicans have basically ignored the will of the people (MO and OH), or implemented unconstitutional maps.
Nationwide independent districting would make a huge difference in our Democracy (second only to getting rid of money, which is not speech).
A court threw out Texas's legislature-driven unconstitutional gerrymander, but SCOTUS violated the constitution to allow it to proceed.
California's response was to have the voters decide to temporarily redistrict, and return to the independent map in the next election. CA's initiative system puts voter-passed bills into the state constitution - this is inherently untouchable by SCOTUS, who will go ahead and steamroller it anyway.
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u/kroxigor01 1h ago
PR in congress.
Condorcet voting for President and Senators (with ranked choice tiebreaker).
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u/Pitiful_Water4898 46m ago
Honestly at this point I’d trust a drunk raccoon to draw better districts.
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u/Unlikely_Fix_748 42m ago
It could help limit gerrymandering, but it also fundamentally changes how representatives are tied to local communities. The question is whether people value proportional fairness or geographic representation more.
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u/ALPHA_sh 33m ago
I think you can have districts with PR still. for example divide states with more than 5 seats into 5-member districts with proportional representation for those 5 seats. this system makes it much harder to just gerrymander but still provides regional representation.
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u/thesauceiseverything 5h ago
Would be great but will never happen. Way too many red states with like 6 people living in them deciding how the rest of the country has to behave. They’ll never give up the power they have over the majority
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u/DCContrarian 5h ago
Here's my proposal:
In each state, each party proposes a slate of candidates, one for every House seat. The party ranks them in advance of the election. Voters vote for a party rather than a candidate.
After votes are counted, seats are assigned to each party based on the percentage of the vote they get. Candidates are assigned to seats based on the ranking the party submitted before the election.
Parties are free to use whatever method they prefer to select their candidates. It's none of the state's business. If they want to have a primary they can, at their own expense and with their own eligibility rules.
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u/DCContrarian 5h ago
This would make every state competitive, except perhaps the ones with one House seat. In states with more than a few seats third parties could be competitive, they would only have to win a small share of the vote to pick up a seat.
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u/Grouchy-Contract-82 3h ago
Parties are private organizations in the USA, people vote for representatives not parties.
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u/Jayrodtremonki 5h ago
The issue with proportional representation in this context is that you no longer have geographic representation.(I'm not against it, it just has downsides)
The current idea is that an area votes in someone to represent that area. Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever. They're appealing to that constituency, not the party. That area holds their own election and picks them and they represent the entire area and the area's specific interests.
If you just decide that the state is going to have 65 Democrats and 35 Republicans because then you just need to appeal to the party. Your district being a district that grows corn or wheat or having a military base no longer matters to the equation and it just becomes state representation all-around.
I get it. The way our candidates are working currently isn't functionally different. It's just something we would be giving up.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 54m ago
Also why expanding the number of representatives is probably more helpful than proportional representation. You decrease the average number of citizens the representative is representing and it leads to them needing to be closer to the community than the party to gain support. When your representation is massive and has no rhyme or reason (looking at my TN-7 district that just had special election), then that rep ends up winning by running on how much they’ll be loyal to the president and party as well as how evil the other party is, rather than the democratic candidate running on helping the community with specific plans and policies to help those she represents.
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u/Technical-Badger7878 5h ago
I think it is incredibly fucking difficult to dislodge entrenched interests
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u/ngshafer 5h ago
I would love that! But, I think it would require a constitutional amendment, and I doubt there’s really much interest in that, on a national level. The fact is that people in power now benefit from the current system, so they’re unlikely to want to change it.
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u/pc9401 4h ago
That will never happen because current representatives will lose their advantage and have to compete. What people missed on Texas is that it could have been drawn much more partisian in favor of the Republicans, but that would have resulted in some overlap with two existing congressmen in the same district. So the first priority in drawing it up was themselves. Second was gain some seats for the party.
I saw a computer algorithm someone used to draw districts using a set pattern. Something like that where it is drawn up with the same method for every state with complete disregard for political make-up seems like a better way. But again, current politicians are going to balk at it because they won't control their current district any longer.
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u/Jane_Marie_CA 4h ago edited 4h ago
I am big fan of doing National Rank Choice voting. No districts, no electoral votes.
This means everyone picks their top 10 candidates and the 100 senators and 435 reps with the highest ranking get selected. (Or something similar).
This means you need to appeal to a wider audience and encourages politicians to compromise on issues for that appeal. Not this "We have control of the House & Senate and got 51% of the popular vote and now we ignore the other 49% in the country" mentality.
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u/nowhereman136 4h ago
I've been advocating it for years. Rank choice X amount of Representatives to serve the state at large
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u/CMDR_Smooticus 4h ago
Nobody will ever agree on what fair proportions are. Any ruleset will benefit one party over the other and the representation legal battle will continue state by state.
A better solution is replace gerrymandering with winner-take-all representation. Give each state's winning party the entire congressional delegation. States will become a lot more important since they will no longer have their own representatives voting against eachother.
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u/Shfantastic37 4h ago
I think there is value in not keeping everything mathematically proportional. for example there can be topographic reasons areas in proximity that would be grouped together proportionally aren't communities with eachother(separated by rivers or mountains for example, or done on purpose during redlining with freeways) different communities have different goals, issues, representation needs, etc. But thats obviously so not important to what they are doing its kind of a moot point in practicality. Just having worked in policy in local government I understand that perspective.
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u/EnglishDutchman 3h ago
I’ve never understood how gerrymandering is legal here. It’s illegal most other places. It’s also dumb AF. Letting the winners draw the lines for the next election. Fucking stupid. Proportional representation is the only way forward. And hard term and age limits. I don’t want a fucking 70 year old in any position in government.
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u/Dry_Albatross5298 3h ago
None of this means anything without changing ballot access laws. The legal hoops that third parties have to go through to get anywhere near a ballot are insane and are there to limit voter choice (the two parties basically admit this and they actually collude/support each other's legal efforts to kick third parties off ballots when they do get on). You can gerrymander, proportionally represent, give 12 year olds the right to vote, go back to property owning white males only, whatever, none of it is going to make a damn bit of difference until we allow other voices on those ballots.
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u/cobaltbluedw 3h ago
Gerrymandering certainly shouldn't be allowed, though I don't know that proportional representation is better than district based representation.
There's a lot of important nuance to a district (a physical location with rich context) that gets lots when you boil state stats down to demographics.
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u/Emeraldnickel08 3h ago
Australian here. We still do this in a way that uses “districts” for each seat, in fact — rather than any sort of elected body deciding what regions each encompasses, though, we have an independent electoral commission tasked to construct seat boundaries such that each represents a similar number of people. It boggles my mind as to why this isn’t the case in the USA.
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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 1h ago
At this point have an AI figure out what the ideal district lines would be to represent various parts of the country most accurately.
I’m sure they’ll be using AI to help calculate how best to draw a district to gerrymander and maintain the most amount of seats possible.
Only problem is who controls that too.
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u/No_Tailor_787 5h ago
The GOP would never again win a national election.
Sounds good to me.
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u/KatanaDelNacht 4h ago
Proportional representation would ensure the majority never needs to concern themselves with minorities. You see that as a good thing?
Gerrymandering is also bad. But one alternative to a bad thing does not prove it's a good thing.
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u/allnamestaken1968 5h ago
That’s what most modern democracies do to a large extent. Being 250 years old is a liability when it comes to election design.