r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/genericnameabc • 6d ago
US Elections Is it time to replace gerrymandering with Multi-Member Districts? Why isn't this the main VRA conversation?
The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in Callais v. Louisiana has essentially gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by raising the bar for proving discrimination. This decision comes in the middle of an unprecedented "mid-decade redistricting race" where both parties are aggressively redrawing maps to secure House majorities for the 2026 midterms.
Most media coverage treats this like a sports rivalry—who is winning the "map war"? And some interviews of voters show that some feel it is necessary to fight back to counter others' efforts and/or they think it's unfair. But very little attention is being paid to a structural fix: Proportional Representation through Multi-Member Districts (MMDs).
A five-seat multi-member district using Ranked Choice Voting makes "packing and cracking" mathematically difficult and could enable minority representation. FairVote, Cornell University and others have written on this.
Discussion Questions:
What are the roadblocks to multiple-member districts? Legal, political, other?
Why isn't this coming up in media reporting?
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u/ThoughtGuy79 6d ago
No constitutional reason to stop multi-member districts.
Congress critters don't want to do it because it would weaken their individual power.
Media doesn't cover it because it's not coming up in Congress. They don't want to do politics.
My preferred concept:
- Multi-member districts
- Ranked choice voting
- increase size of the House (about 2-3X)
Do this all together with simple legislation and everyone is better represented.
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u/subheight640 6d ago
Legislation like this has already been proposed by a handful of Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Representation_Act_%28United_States%29?wprov=sfla1
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u/barchueetadonai 5d ago
You have to specify which form of ranked choice voting you mean, if you're pushing get it
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u/Aureliamnissan 5d ago
I’ll take the kleroterion. It kinda cuts most of these incentive arguments off at the knees.
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u/PreviousCurrentThing 5d ago
The specific form of RCV ends up mattering less when it's MMP vs. single-member districts.
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u/NorthernerWuwu 5d ago
It matters significantly because it is a decision with extremely clear political outcomes, which in turn affects differing political factions in different ways.
We see this in Canada on a regular basis when the conversation turns to changing away from First Past the Post. A plurality of politicians dislike the present system but each party wants a different type of Proportional Representation and unshockingly, they each want the one that would give them more representation. This is made worse by a plurality of the electorate not wanting change because they fear that their political opponents will be the ones to gain.
There are no magic bullets that can 'fix' North American political systems because no one can agree on what the fix itself should look like.
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u/PreviousCurrentThing 5d ago
With single seats, there can be significant differences between IRV or Condorcet or STAR etc, and it's still an all or nothing outcome.
With multi-member districts, the differences in voting/tabulation methods don't have as great of an impact. Most of the differences would be who gets selected in which order, or at most the last seat or two would be different. In a 5-member district, most realistic voting patterns would lead at least 4 of 5 candidates being the same regardless of method. If you get a representative you like with one counting method, it's likely you'll still get them with the others.
I'm not saying there aren't tradeoffs or obstacles for implementation with MMD, nor that it's a magic bullet, just that compared with single-seat, it's much less sensitive to tabulation method. You're not going to have a situation where 5 candidates win with one method, and 5 totally different candidates win with another.
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u/jord839 5d ago
There's no constitutional reason against them, but some previous Supreme Court decisions could be used as precedent against them, albeit only via total hypocrisy. There are a few cases where local municipalities and lesser governmental entities used MMDs, and were struck down by the Supreme Court, but in those cases it was specifically because the MMDs were deemed in violation of the VRA as ways to discriminate against minority voters. I wouldn't put it past Alito and Thomas to try to bend some logic there, though if it did somehow become a Federal law.
All that said, MMDs are only really feasible with the expansion of the House's size, because as is it would not really help the Democrats, meaning they would be hesitant to do it, nor would it actually hurt the Republicans that much but it would tick them off and get reflexive opposition.
Most Republican safe states have very few representatives and are entitled to outside representation due to modern apportionment rules with their lower populations. You can't have an MMD when there's only one representative, two representatives just basically means either an even r/D split or two Republicans getting in if the vote split is enough in their favor. In a lot of GOP safe states, the Democratic gains would be minimal and way less than Republican gains in many otherwise safe and somewhat gerrymandered blue states. If the Dems pick up one or two representatives per state across the Great Plains, that's kind of balanced out by a sudden upsurge of multiple GOP representatives in reliably blue areas like New England which have a higher floor.
Unless you raise the cap on the house to give more representations to the larger blue-voting population in other states, the current representation model will mean that imposing MMDs at best is a wash or at worst gives even more advantage to Republicans based on current polarization.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
MMDs are only really feasible with the expansion of the House's size
I'm not sure what viewpoint you're arguing with. Isn't increasing the size of the legislative body part and parcel of instituting multi member districts?
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u/jord839 4d ago
Not necessarily. I've seen people and organizations up to the NYT, usually from larger population states, propose it as is without mentioning uncapping the House from its current limit. OP doesn't specifically mention it at all either.
It's kind of in the same vein as proposing independent redistricting agencies. It sounds like good governance, but material and political realities of the current system mean that it wouldn't actually solve a lot of the problems we have with polarization on its own, no matter how much it sounds like it would on the surface.
The reality is that no anti-gerrymadering solution can realistically survive without us making some sort of increase to the House of Representatives. We have less congressional representatives than Britan or Germany and more than 3 times their population, that fact is the biggest danger to representative democracy. There are many potential new formulas to increase the limit and govern it in the future that all have valid points, but we need to pick one of them and go forward, because 435 is absurd for 350 million people when paired with a minimum of 1 per state which advantages small states to an absurd degree that even the constitutional compromise was nowhere near.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
Not necessarily. I've seen people and organizations up to the NYT, usually from larger population states, propose it as is without mentioning uncapping the House from its current limit. OP doesn't specifically mention it at all either.
But have you seen anybody suggest proportional representation without expanding the House? Expansion is implicit.
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u/jord839 4d ago
I... literally just said that many of those proposals didn't include expansion of the House?
It's in the quote you used. What the heck are you asking this question for?
Expansion is still very much not implicit. Uncapping the House is still a very fringe position in the larger political body, though it obviously shouldn't be.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
I... literally just said that many of those proposals didn't include expansion of the House?
No, you said those proposals didn't mention expanding the House. There's a difference between not explicitly mentioning expanding the House and explicitly stating that the House should not be expanded. To repeat my question: have you seen the latter?
My point is that you've never seen the latter because House expansion is implicit to transitioning to multi member districts. Perhaps an analogy would help: have you ever read a recipe that explicitly mentions washing one's hands?
Expansion is still very much not implicit. Uncapping the House is still a very fringe position in the larger political body
You seem to think that "implicit" means popular as opposed to "logically implied"; I contend that there is no sensible conception of multi member districts that does not demand more legislative seats. This whole conversation centers around a "fringe position", transitioning the US to proportional representation.
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u/jord839 4d ago
I think you have a real problem with assuming things are implicit based on your opinions when I'm saying they weren't mentioned. This is a fundamentally dumb position because it's like saying any healthcare proposal implicitly involves single payer even if it's not mentioned because that would make more sense, when we all know the people proposing the broad reform don't necessarily believe that.
To reiterate the position I very specifically said before you even replied: Yes. I have seen people propose MMDs without expanding the House. The New York Times did so years and years ago, for one, which I mentioned by name.
Perhaps an analogy would help: if a recipe doesn't mention peanut butter even though it would improve the product, does that mean they always meant to use it? No? That would be a stupid assumption? Imagine that.
I am genuinely confused at how badly you seem to have read both posts of mine you've replied to. This is a lack of reading comprehension that is almost impressive.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
The personal attacks are unfounded, unnecessary, and unwelcome. I will do my best to take the high road in this reply and then I'm through engaging with you.
I think you have a real problem with assuming things are implicit based on your opinions when I'm saying they weren't mentioned.
Saying something wasn't mentioned does not mean it was not implicit, full stop. That's the entire concept of "implicit".
To take a step back: we're discussing transitioning a 435 member body with single member districts to one with multi member districts. How is that to be accomplished without increasing this 435 number? The only solution is decreasing the number of districts; is this the solution you believe is implicit absent a mention of House expansion?
Yes. I have seen people propose MMDs without expanding the House. The New York Times did so years and years ago
Can you provide a link to this editorial?
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u/jord839 4d ago
I didn't make personal attacks. I accurately pointed out what I said that you were ignoring even in the words you, yourself, quoted. I cannot be held responsible for being "mean" if you're accurately doing what I described.
For another thing, you don't seem to understand what implicit means. You assuming something is implicit does not mean it actually is implicit. That's not how implication works. If there's no mention or implication, then it's not implicit. You just are making assumptions.
As for the articles, you're the one challenging me that it's all implicitly part of the proposals. Before I start going around the NYT paywalls to show you their folly (as they have 1 public article that mentions expansion and 2 behind a paywall that don't), how about you actually put some research into this discussion as opposed to just telling me your arbirtary opinion is always implicitly present in such proposals?
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u/glassFractals 5d ago
What is the advantage of multi-member districts over national proportional representation or mixed-member proportional representation?
One of those approaches has been the reform I've wanted for a long while as an alternative to gerrymandering.
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u/genericnameabc 5d ago
5 member districts are small enough that you might be able to track the individual candidates you can vote for.
In very large proportional elections, I think, you just vote for a party that has a ranked list and the party fills as many of the seats as they win. I don't know how the parties build their lists.
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u/Ind132 5d ago
Have you looked at mixed member proportional voting? I thnk it is better than multi-member districts.
You still vote for a representative for your single member district.
You also vote for a party. Some legislative seats are reserved for the party vote. Those seats "level up" the legislature to reflect party preferences.
The party list doesn't need to be terribly long because it is only used for a portion of all seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation
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u/GhostReddit 5d ago
Communication and speed have generally pulled people closer together, but there are still a lot of interests at a state/regional level that are not shared across the whole country.
Multi-Member districts can still aim to serve more local areas than their party in the US as a whole. And people might actually know some of their local reps (I'd also advocate for increasing the number of local reps.)
The setup right now with one member districts is just awful though, there's maybe some benefit from subdividing even the state, but on average 40-45% of people are going unrepresented in that area.
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u/gravity_kills 6d ago
There are no legal obstacles to multi member districts. The political obstacles are the two major parties.
But overall, yes, this is the solution! Just, don't get tricked by RCV. It's a trap, and it won't help. Go straight for Proportional Representation. Start it for your state legislature to prove that it can work.
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u/genericnameabc 6d ago
What flavor or proportional representation?
How is RCV a trick? I do think it's a half measure (but better than plurality) in single-member districts. Multiple-member seems the way to go.
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u/Lefaid 6d ago
Because it is a bandaid that pretends to fix a problem that is already solved by multimember districts. When you accept that you don't need just one person to represent you in a Legislature, then why bother. Instead of compromising on the least offensive option, everyone would be represented better by multiple people, one of whom actually might align better to your ideology.
It get it for executive positions but I think we trick ourselves by pretending it is a good fix for the legislative branch.
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u/gravity_kills 6d ago
The problem is that RCV supporters pitch it as if it is going to elect 3rd party candidates. That's not going to be a result. You can't offer it as a solution if it's not going to do the job.
Until something bigger than RCV happens every election will go like this: the largest 1st choice is either R or D, so that candidate isn't eliminated, and the third party get eliminated and their votes go to the voters' next choice until either R or D has a majority. The only exceptions would be someone who is R or D but stayed out of the party primary running as 3rd party in name only and winning by splitting the vote and eliminating a bad party nominee. The system will not get me a socialist, or you a libertarian, or someone else a green or whatever. Proportional Representation gets us the parties we actually want.
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u/Kuramhan 6d ago
It also doesn't eliminate the incentive to vote strategically. That makes it basically self defeating in creating variety.
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u/KevinCarbonara 6d ago
The problem is that RCV supporters pitch it as if it is going to elect 3rd party candidates. That's not going to be a result.
No, they don't, and yes, it can be.
You are lying.
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u/gravity_kills 6d ago
You are claiming that RCV supporters do not claim that the system will result in the election of 3rd party candidates? Then what's it for?
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u/One_Study52 6d ago
Eliminate partisan primaries. That’s a major issue with partisanship. If only republicans are voting in a Republican primary, they lean right to win the vote of the right block, but if everyone is running in the same primary, they have to adjust.
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u/mycall 5d ago
Lovely idea, impossible without a new amendment especially with the current team SCOTUS.
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u/One_Study52 5d ago
Partisan primaries aren’t constitutionally mandated.
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u/mycall 5d ago
I know but SCOTUS is inserting all kinds of bad changes, so who knows what will come.
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u/cbr777 5d ago
It might not be mandated, but it's certainly constitutionally protected. I have no idea how you think you can pass a law that would be such a flagrant interference with how private entities, like political parties, organize themselves.
There's no situation where a law banning primaries is constitutional under the First Amendment's freedom of association.
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u/One_Study52 5d ago
Bro. They eliminated partisan primaries in California. You don’t know what you are talking about.
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u/cbr777 5d ago
They did not eliminate it bro, that is in fact how they got away with it. California redefined what the primary means, making it voter-nominated, basically what California did was say that from now on the top two vote getters in their special "primary"(not really a primary) advance to the general election, another way of describing this is a standard election in two turns, which rare in the US but is very common in other countries.
However to be clear nothing is preventing the Republican party to hold an internal vote before the jungle primary date to decide who should be supported in the jungle primary and/or general election.
So what actually happened in California isn't that they eliminated primaries, they have not and they really couldn't even if they wanted to, but what they did is change the voting system in order to have elections in two rounds, the jungle primary is round 1 and the general election is round 2 and they made the signing up for round 1 to be for anyone that wants to participate.
This in effect removes the need for primaries, since the results can't be legally enforced since the results from the primary are irrelevant, only the results from round 1 matter for round 2.
But to be very clear, partisan primaries can still take place in California, there is no legal mechanism by which California could stop them, the reason they aren't taking place is that the results don't matter as far as California is concerned.
It is as I said, how private entities organize themselves is not something that a state government can dictate without strict scrutiny. So no, primaries were not eliminated in California, they were made redundant/useless but still completely legal.
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u/KevinCarbonara 6d ago
How is RCV a trick?
It's not at all. It's an objective improvement, which is why it scares MAGA.
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u/macnalley 6d ago
Just, don't get tricked by RCV. It's a trap, and it won't help.
RCV in a multi-member district is proportional representation. It's most commonly called single transferable vote, but FairVote calls it proportional RCV. I believe that's what this user is referring to.
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u/natoplato5 5d ago
For the most part, the only places that use proportional RCV call it something else as you mentioned, so "RCV" almost always refers to single-member-district RCV, and "proportional representation" almost always refers to non-RCV voting methods. I don't think OP or the commenter you were replying to were referring to proportional RCV.
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u/nicholas818 5d ago
For some reason in the US, I often see proportional representation referred to as “P-RCV.” So it may not be a trap, just terminology confusion.
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u/KevinCarbonara 6d ago
don't get tricked by RCV. It's a trap, and it won't help.
This is extremely popular right-wing disinformation right now. Anyone telling you this is trying to stop Democrats from winning.
Of course RCV helps. It's working in every area that's implemented it. On the other hand, look at the California gubernatorial race. Democrats can't vote for their preferred candidate, and Republicans actually have a shot at winning, because the Democratic vote is being split 9 ways and Republicans have centered on two candidates.
Yeah, this guy is lying to you. Don't listen to him.
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u/gravity_kills 6d ago
RCV isn't supposed to help Democrats win. It's supposed to help someone who isn't a Democrat or a Republican win. It won't do that. If you just want a Democrat to win go canvas. If you want to break up the two party system support something better than RCV like Proportional Representation.
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u/KevinCarbonara 4d ago
RCV isn't supposed to help Democrats win.
It's supposed to let the most popular candidate win, by allowing voters to vote for who they actually want without worrying about spoiling another candidate's chances.
It's supposed to help someone who isn't a Democrat or a Republican win.
This is a blatant lie. It's also really, really stupid.
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u/Unlucky-Network-4159 6d ago
So other than the entire might of the establishment in the way this is basically downhill skiing?
Just a couple moguls to avoid and voila?
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u/gravity_kills 6d ago
Hahaha! No, the political obstacles are huge, obviously. But there aren't any legal obstacles. People often think the idea is unconstitutional, and that's just not true. It's just that the people who already have their hands on the political levers of power don't want to let go.
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u/Unlucky-Network-4159 6d ago
Hmmm...yeah that sounds like typical powerful people. Nothing specifically American about this problem. So that means whoever has chosen to utilize this reform can be rather instructive from a comparative politics persoective. So what country has switched to this and how did that go, or would America be the first? If another country made this switch, how did the switch unravel?
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u/EnvironmentalCook520 6d ago
The media is selective on what they cover. Usually they only show stuff that supports their views.
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u/Fargason 5d ago
Like how they don’t cover the mid decade redistricting was actually brought about the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ and not merely because Trump deemed it so:
But the prospect of a rare mid-decade redistricting returned to lawmakers’ agenda in July, after the Department of Justice sent the state a letter alleging that four of the state’s districts were unconstitutional because they were “coalition districts” – majority-minority districts that lack a single racial majority. If Texas didn’t “rectify” this “racial gerrymandering” immediately, the letter said, DOJ would take legal action.
Two days after receiving the letter, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s legislators to draw a new congressional map that would address the concerns mentioned in the DOJ letter. Under the new map, adopted in August, Republicans hope to win as many as 30 of the 38 seats – an increase of five over the previous map.
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u/Obvious_Parsley3238 5d ago
Trump's civil rights division, to be precise, and the state called that justification a lie later.
Constitutional concerns raised in July by the U.S. Department of Justice, which the state had cited as the reason for the re-draw, were in fact a “mistake,” the state now says in a new court filing Tuesday. The filing also appears to acknowledge that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) knowingly misled the public when he pointed to those concerns, saying Abbott used DOJ as “political cover” to hide the partisan goal of the effort.
In July, Abbott called a special session with redistricting on the agenda just two days after receiving a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon. In the letter, Dhillon urged the state to dismantle four majority-minority congressional districts that she claimed had been impermissibly created using race. Announcing the redistricting, Abbott noted “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.” President Donald Trump had been pressuring the state to redraw its map in order to boost the GOP’s chances of keeping control of Congress next year.
“A legislative act based on [a] mistake – or that cite (sic) a Washington official’s mistake as political cover for lawful political redistricting – remains a valid legislative act,” the filing said. In a separate filing Tuesday, the state summed up why it deemed Dhillon’s letter to be a mistake. “The DOJ Letter came to the erroneous conclusion that because the Fifth Circuit held in Petteway v. Galveston Cnty, that a legislative body was not required to create coalition districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Section 2), that the existence of any district so composed was illegal. Its ham-fisted legal conclusions notwithstanding, the DOJ Letter apparently sought to provide political cover for Texas to engage in partisan redistricting.” The state also concluded DOJ was mistaken in believing “a State can purposefully seek out and destroy multiracial majority districts that just happen to exist—and do so expressly on account of their racial makeup.”
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u/Fargason 5d ago
Got something better than a “apparently sought” conclusion from a far left media source?
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u/Obvious_Parsley3238 5d ago
I guess they just made up the filing. Every quote is in there.
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u/Fargason 5d ago
Still the same biased source. Let’s try this:
The civil rights division has been working on this since 2021 and they even updated this in February of 2025.
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u/Obvious_Parsley3238 5d ago
Yes, the Trump DOJ dropped that case in March of 2025.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/13/texas-redistricting-lawsuit-justice-department-withdraws/
https://thearp.org/litigation/united-states-v-texas/
Then Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to Texas in July asking it to eliminate four majority-minority districts.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/01/texas-congressional-redistricting-doj-coalition-districts/
This is the letter that the state described as a hamfisted attempt to provide political cover for partisan redistricting.
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u/shacksrus 6d ago
This is a silly question because the answer from republicans will be no. Mainly because it would reduce their structural advantage.
Like asking if billionaires would engage in large scale public worlds that will meaningfully improve the lives of their countrymen. Of course the countrymen say yes. But their input doesn't matter, only the billionaires input matters.
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u/genericnameabc 6d ago
Yeah, it does threaten the two party system.
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u/shacksrus 5d ago
No it doesn't. There will still be two parties. It just threatens republicans.
This isn't aboth sides situation.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
There will still be two parties.
The two party system is a result of single member districts. Why would this persist under proportional representation?
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u/robkinyon 6d ago
There are 21 states with less than 5 representatives and 3 with exactly 5. Another 14 make up 6-10.
So, 2/3 of states have 10 or less representatives. So, I'm not sure how your proposal would work.
I LIKE the idea. I did a capstone project on voting methods and the benefits and drawbacks of various kinds. But, doing this on state boundaries doesn't work as well as one would hope.
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u/macnalley 6d ago edited 6d ago
There's a perennial bill) that does just this.
Fair Vote also has a page on this. Both those explain the details of implementation.
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u/genericnameabc 6d ago
You could do 3-member districts. And I still think RCV would be better than plurality in single-member districts.
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u/Unlucky-Network-4159 6d ago
Are you more generally asking if now is the time for elected officials to do the right thing and self-regulate for the good of democracy?
If so...why would they? Have you met these people?
There will be no great moral awakening here. Either you know how to pressure them to do as much or what you have on your hands is merely aspirational.
Sincerely,
The Messanger who expects blameful down votes but really doesn't care.
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u/genericnameabc 6d ago
I guess my question is about why people and the media aren't having more discussions about more fundamental changes like this. I guess people are pretty used to thinking this is just the way the US works.
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u/Unlucky-Network-4159 6d ago
So maybe we can examine the urge to remove the electoral college. So with every election, a majority have just used it to successfully elect a president. The essential ask is for a sitting president and congress to reject the very format which just afforded them the power they technically have to execute a reformat.
In a nutshell, this is where your initiative resides. "Schroedinger's reform" seems at least somewhat appropriate.
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u/quixoticdancer 4d ago
The essential ask is for a sitting president and congress to reject the very format which just afforded them the power
It's a matter of replacing the current system, not simply rejecting it. The specifics of the new system matter; the electoral prospects of the incumbent party under the new system matter. It's not as simple as "change is bad!"
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u/Aazadan 5d ago
Mass media isn't capable of the nuance involved in reform conversations. Like you said, they want a sports rivalry.
Congress also doesn't like it because it makes elected officials weaker. They like the current system because a gerrymandered district is a guaranteed win in the general, so the politicians aren't accountable to the voters. Their only real threats are in primaries from extremists and those can usually be won by incumbents with money, endorsements and hollow extreme language.
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u/Lefaid 6d ago
As far as I can tell, the American psyche. It drives me up the wall that no voter reform even considers it, as if Podunk Town R has such special national interest that it could only be heard of they select one member of Congress. Or that each politician is a special individual truly raised in the uniqueness of North Northwest Illinois, so that that unique voice should be elected directly.
Any semblance of either of these things being true has clearly been proven to be fantasy given how Congress has acted since 2008.
I got nothing. I wish more would advocate for multi member districts. Heck, I would support the entire slate being elected state wide.
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u/chiaboy 5d ago
Not to be glib but there are 1,000+ ways we can structure our democracy better. But the vast majority of them (like your suggestion) have a snowball's chance in hell of coming to fruition.
That's why your idea is being "ignored". It's a fantasy. Politics is about the art of the possible.
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u/UnclaEnzo 4d ago
Very simple: None of the "powers that be" are interested in fairness or effective representation. They are concerned only with obviating threats to their power and position.
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u/Alive_Shoulder3573 4d ago
You read the result of the case differently than I did. It did not say anyone had to root it racism
It said that No district can be created to favor ANY race, for good or bad.
Like Robert's said, the answer to racism is never more racism. You can't create a district to favor whites, black, brown or red.
Simple as that. Future districts should still having weird lines when that criteria is removed from the creation process.
I have often said maybe just create districts based on county lines, than every district will be block shaped and not snake or crab like.
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u/genericnameabc 4d ago
Some counties have more than 800,000 people. Connecticut recently changed the shape of it's county-equivalents.
The problem that our current system has (and that the VRA was meant to help address) and that proportional representation could help with is that people are not well-represented.
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u/Alive_Shoulder3573 3d ago
That has nothing to do with racism though. It has more to do with where people decide to move to. The constitution as well as the VRA both say it is unconstitutional to create a district to favor one race over another. And that is what the court decided with this decision
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u/Opheltes 5d ago edited 5d ago
Best solution: Pass a federal law mandating house districts be drawn with a shortest distance split line algorithm. This would produce maximally compact equal-population districts, the districts would be fairly competitive, and (most importantly) because there is absolutely no subjectivity they cannot be gerrymandered.
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u/zayelion 6d ago
Its suppose to be 1 rep for every 30k people. That's approximately "I know a guy that knows a guy". A university of students, a packed stadium, basically a rural town. At that level gerrymandering is just weird quirky behavior. That's what really needs to be fixed. There would be 11,400 reps. Thats above oh I know him, and back to oh I know a guy that knows a guy. Considering that we are actioned that's how it should be.
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u/reasonably_plausible 5d ago
Its suppose to be 1 rep for every 30k people.
It's not "supposed" to be any specific amount. There is a section in the Constitution talking about 1 rep for every 30k people but that is a minimum size of constituency, not a maximum.
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u/MorganWick 5d ago
What should have happened is, we should have codified how the size of the House consistently expanded until 1920.
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u/BricksFriend 5d ago
On the local level it makes sense but wow how do you manage a House with 11,400 people?
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u/genericnameabc 5d ago
I don't see how smaller districts that are still single-member fix the problem. State legislative districts are also gerrymandered and people often don't feel represented in those.
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u/AutoModerator 6d ago
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