Are you affected by the gerrymandering that is so prevalent in each of our fifty United States of America? Think of it as the political trickery to rob you of your vote to have an effective U.S. House of Representatives. And, by the way, each of the States’ legislatures as well.
Take a moment to look at the current situation in this country:
2016 House Election Votes 2016 House Seats
|
|
% of vote |
|
|
|
Seats |
% of seats |
|
Democrats |
48.7 |
|
|
Democrats |
194 |
44.6 |
|
Republicans |
51.3 |
|
|
Republicans |
223 |
51.3 |
|
|
|
|
|
Bonus_Republicans |
18 |
4.1 |
|
Total |
100.0 |
|
|
Total |
435 |
100.0 |
In the November 2016 elections for the US House of Representatives, Republicans got 51.3 percent of all the votes cast for Democrats and Republicans in Congressional elections, but got 241 seats, a bonus of 18 more than 51% of 435 would give them, because of gerrymandering.
In 2012, it was worse.
2012 House Election Votes 2012 House Seats
|
|
% of vote |
|
|
|
Seats |
% of seats |
|
Democrats |
50.6 |
|
|
Democrats |
201 |
46.2 |
|
Republicans |
49.4 |
|
|
Republicans |
215 |
49.4 |
|
|
|
|
|
Bonus_Republicans |
19 |
4.4 |
|
Total |
100.0 |
|
|
Total |
435 |
100.0 |
Democrats had a majority of the votes in Congressional elections, 50.6 percent to 49.4, but got only 201 seats. Republicans got 234, a bonus of 19. The 19 seat bonus gave them control of the House.
This happens because state legislatures, mostly Republican, draw Congressional districts to favor the controlling party. They do that by carefully carving up their state so that Republicans outnumber the Democrats in most districts, while leaving the Democrats a few, hugely lopsided districts where their majority is wasted. There’s software to help do this.
To see how they actually draw these districts, check this out:
It’s ridiculous.
What is to be done ? We could fight for fairer redistricting, and we should.
But we really need a better system.
We need a system where clever line drawing cannot get you any political advantage. We could have that, by adopting the “Double Member, Proxy Holder System”. This system wastes nobody’s votes, makes line drawing unimportant, yet keeps representation local. No more worrying about ‘caging’ the vote, or about low-density districts with more cows than people. No more worrying about state legislators’ egregious conflict of interest. No more gerrymandering.
THE Solution: The Double Member, Proxy Holder System
In this system, every Congressional district gets two members instead of just one. Each political party fields one candidate per district, and the top two vote-receiving candidates are elected to Congress. Typically, that would be one Democrat and one Republican. However, and this is key, the members are not equal. Each elected member carries to Congress the proxies of those who voted for him/her, and it is those proxies that he/she casts when voting. If member A is elected with 300,000 votes, and member B is elected with 200,000, then whenever a bill comes up for a vote, member A will be casting his/her 300,000 proxies, and member B will be casting his/her 200,000 proxies. To pass a bill, you would need a majority of the proxies.
Assuming that we want to keep the House approximately the same size, we would cut the number of districts in half, to 218. In an election where no third parties won a seat, then the House of Representatives would have 218 Democratic members and 218 Republican members. But control of the body would be determined by the party that carried the most voter proxies.
If 120 million votes were cast, as was the case in November 2016, then the average representative would carry about 275,000 proxies. To pass a bill, you would need a majority of the 120 million proxies.
In this system, gerrymandering becomes impossible, because the power of a party in the legislature is determined not by how many members the party has, but by how many voter proxies the members carry.
‘Caging’ the vote won’t work. If you put all the African Americans into one district representing the big city, then that one representative is going to carry a lot of voter proxies to Congress. So you can’t ‘waste’ votes by redrawing district lines.
Nor can you gain any advantage by drawing a lot of low-density districts with more cows and square miles than people, because the representatives from those districts are not going to be carrying many proxies to Congress.
EVERY VOTE COUNTS IN THIS SYSTEM.
Even if you live in a lopsided district, you still need to vote, whichever party you support, because you want your representative to carry as many proxies as possible.
Primary elections would need to be held as they are now, but they would assume additional importance, since they would determine the identity of the Democratic and Republican candidates (and other party candidates) for the general election. We would not have open primaries.
I’d like to see the “Double Member, Proxy Holder System” applied to the US House of Representative and to state legislatures, but not to the US Senate, which was not intended by the founders to be proportionally representative. In the case of the House of Representatives, a constitutional amendment would be needed, but this would not be necessary for state legislatures.
Third Parties
So far I have assumed a two-party system, without considering other parties.
To allow for third parties, I would add the following provision: Within each state, each political party can field an at-large candidate in addition to the candidates who are running at the district level. In that case, when a party (say Green, for instance) runs a candidate in a district, but does not win (that is, does not come in first or second) then their votes are applied to the party’s statewide, at-large candidate. If the at-large candidate gets enough votes, statewide, to exceed a certain threshold (TBD), then he/she is elected and goes to Congress, and carries the proxies of everyone who voted for him/her.
With regard to the threshold, I think the basic idea should be that if you get as many votes, statewide, as would have won you the election in a particular district, then you should be elected.
This means that the legislature will not always have exactly the same number of members, since there will be a variable number of at-large members. I don’t think that’s a problem, because the proxies are what matters.
Prospects for Getting It Enacted
Constitutional amendments are difficult but not impossible to pass.
Most people say they believe in fairness. I believe we can easily show that the present single-member-district system is unfair and corrupt, and that the Double Member Proxy Holder System will be effective in eliminating that unfairness, and will remove a major opportunity for corruption. I just hope this argument is persuasive enough to carry this change forward.
Notes
i) In the November 2016 elections for the US House of Representatives, Democrats got 48.7 percent of all the votes cast for Democrats and Republicans in Congressional elections, while Republicans got 51.3 percent (Wikipedia). If the House were divided proportionally by party, that is, if Democrats had gotten 48.7 percent of the 435 seats, then the Democrats would have gotten 212 seats and the Republicans 223. The actual split was 194 for Democrats to 241 for Republicans. That means that Democrats have 18 fewer seats than a proportional allocation would give them, while the Republicans have 18 seats more.
ii) In 2012 the Democrats had a majority of the votes in Congressional elections, 50.6 percent to 49.4, but got only 201 seats to the Republicans 234. If they’d gotten 50.6 percent of the 435 seats, there would have been 220 Democratic seats, a 19 seat difference. The Democrats would have controlled the House.
iii) Percentages for the 2016 and 2012 US House of Representatives elections were computed from voter totals given on Wikipedia, and do not count third parties.
iv) Thanks to Clifford Brodie, for his kind assistance in editing the article.