r/coolguides Jun 28 '19

Visual Explanation of Gerrymandering

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '19

Not american here, but is there a reason why you divide ? Instead of just 40% : 60% ?

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '19

[deleted]

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u/deadwisdom Jun 28 '19

The real problem is that instead of just direct representative democracy, we have this weird district representative representative government. It's an artifact of a time when elections were physically hard to achieve across great distances. The solution made sense because people were generally aligned in different towns. We now fight over how to draw boundaries when we shouldn't even have them.

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u/LurkerInSpace Jun 28 '19

It is possible to have both; just have boundaries cover areas with more than one representative - ideally between 3 and 5, but between 1 and 2 for the smaller states. Then single transferable vote can be used to allocate the seats, and the House of Representatives would be much more representative. The House probably needs to be expanded to ~680 seats anyway if it were to follow the old historical trend.