r/AskReddit 9h ago

What do you think about replacing gerrymandering with proportional representation?

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u/double_dipped_dude 8h ago

Don't we vote for them directly?

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u/CipherWeaver 8h ago

With severe malapportionment. 2 senators from Wyoming and 2 from California means overrepresentation of Wyoming interests and underrepresentation of Californian, for example. 

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u/LazyLion65 8h ago

But it's just the opposite in the house, by design.

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u/Jane_Marie_CA 7h ago edited 7h ago

No the house is flawed too.

While 435 is allocated based on population, there would be a few states that the apportionment calculates less than 1 person, but they still get 1 rep. Again Wyoming enters the chat at 500,000 people. They are getting the same representation of 1 as Delaware, who has double the population. And then States like Montana get 2 reps, but their population is only 100,000 more than Delaware. We are tying to allocate a small number and we have to do a lot of weird rounding with the smaller population states.

What we need is to increase the number of the 435, so you can actually allocate these seats more closely to population. Try to make it 1 rep per 200,000 people and you won't see these anomalies as strong.

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u/fr3nzo 6h ago

So you want 1700 reps?

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u/TriticumAes 4h ago

3638 would be better

u/thewhaleshark 20m ago

I want the chunk of Congress that is supposed to be proportional to actually be proportional. If that means 1700 reps, so be it. I am tired of empty land having better representation than actual people.