Well for the last 3 weeks we’ve seen anarchy in action and it didn’t seem to help a whole lot. But I sure do agree with you that some other model of governance would be worth looking at.
Idea: Start hippie communes in every gerrymandered district. Sure it might inflame the culture wars to the point of being (even more) insanely dangerous. But it would start liberals moving into conservative territory, and might chase the conservatives out of their ghettos/gated communities.
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There must be some aspect of game theory that covers this. Perhaps if each side took turns to pick a small square of the overall area, until the total area is accounted for?
What about the increasing stratification of US cities? I don’t think ‘self-gathering’ is an accurate term, the poor people may not Want to live in those areas, but it’s all they can afford.
Preferential voting could help. Here’s a hint, the Australian Conservatives (led by the Liberal Party (!!!)) are planning on going from mandatory preferential voting to optional preferential voting at a Federal level, which will seriously hamper the minor parties.
I have a better idea, find a bunch of talented and intelligent people and fund the them. Have them achieve a rational mission.
The problems with this idea are:
- People disagree about what would constitute a “rational” mission. You may think tea partiers, anarchists, and hippies are irrational but they probably think the same about you.
- Where are these funds coming from? If you’re expecting hundreds of thousands or millions to contribute small amounts then there’s the problem of concentrating them by finding intelligent people and a rational mission that hundreds of thousands or millions of people can agree on which brings us back to (1).
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It would be nice, but how would you define what is and isn’t gerrymandering? What are the “natural” lines along which you would divide districts? If you go with historical borders like county lines you will get homogenous populations in many places. If you use an algorithm to draw shortest-line segments to divide the population, you will get outliers. From the standpoint of the constituency the best outcome is to have hard-fought contests because that makes the representatives more responsive. But even here, the problem is deciding what districts make an even fight between parties means you are deciding which parties matter. The districting problem is analogous to the problem of the electoral college and the senate—what is ultimately the political unit being represented? A geographical district, or a number of people?
Slate has an article on some efforts around the country to achieve “fairer” districts. There are better ideas out there. We get what we ask for - or what we allow to happen.
How about we agree on the “no-brainers” and ignore the radicals. The money can come from the most of us.
What if I’m one of these radicals you scorn?
Just generally I think you’re overestimating the amount of consensus you could get behind any one particular policy position or particular platform.
“Most of us” don’t seem to agree on anything. Though I think you’re right that apathy is a bigger obstacle than gerrymandering (though I’m not sure its due to laziness so much as learned helplessness).
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Rule 1: each district should represent the same number of voters
Rule 2: each district should visually approximate a square or rectangle (rounded corners are fine, but no deep concaves, thankyouverymuch)
Rule 3: Use natural boundaries where practical. Roads, rivers and streams especially, mountain ranges, park boundaries
Rule 4: The only population metric which may be used when setting boundaries is the number of voters (and their party preference is explicitly NOT to be take into account)
Rule 5: boundaries are set, using a pragmatic application of the previous rules, by an unelected, impartial civil service, and reviewed by an independent body.
Sure, you’ll still get outliers, but as long as outliers are actually outliers, rather than the norm, then the odd outlier is ok.
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Instead of trying to do a better job drawing congressional districts, I propose we eliminate the concept entirely.
Members of the House of Representatives should be elected at large, with proportional representation based on the percentage of votes received.
No more gerrymandering, no more “safe seats”, every vote matters because even a small party (e.g. Green, Libertarian) can possibly muster enough votes to get one representative in a state with a good sized delegation.
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