21–30 of 51 posts
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).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't you just split elected representatives into two groups, regardless of stated political affiliation? One group then cuts, the other chooses.
Defections. Electeds will happily maximize their own personal power at someone else's expense. There are many examples of getting opposition support for inequity in exchange for safe seats. People outside of (partisan) politics don't often get to see that the party orgs and the politicians are usually in conflict. More so on the left than on the right.
There is a whole field of study around efficient "cake cutting" algorithms, many of which contemplate and account for defectors.
"I cut, you choose" is really the only politically viable alternative to the current state of affairs. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/how-the-i-cut-yo...
How hard would it be to change the congressional election system to proportional voting by party? In California you would vote for 53 representatives, each representative would be part of a party. First the seats are divided among all parties based on some system. Then within each party the seats are given to the representatives that have the most votes within the party. This would introduce new parties to the system…
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).
Gerrymandering is a danger to democracy and it is great that researchers shine light on the different trade-offs of districting criteria. This website seems like a great demonstration of the fairness and competitiveness trade-offs.
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).
Likely it means that big cities would get all the reps and the rest of the state gets nothing.
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).
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.
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).
Likely it means that big cities would get all the reps and the rest of the state gets nothing.