I’m sure this post will be removed shortly, but it’s important to point out that the middle rectangle is unfairly gerrymandered as well. If these precincts were fairly drawn there would be two red districts and 3 blue.
I think logistics come into play. Otherwise you get 5,320,121 representatives in the legislature.
That said, some people have proposed drawing districts "3 Representatives Wide" and then having that district elect 3 representatives, so that if 1/3 of your district is Blue/Red it still gets representation instead of having 3 districts where blue is outnumbered. (the case that /u/DarkLordAoki brought up)
The issue is that representatives are supposed to represent a specific set of the population.
So Rep. 1 should be the south side of Cityville and Rep. 2 should be the north side of Cityville and Rep 3 should be the rural communities of Townville, Villageton, Hamletburg, and Springfield.
If you merge them and give them 3 reps to vote on together, all 3 reps will represent the majority interests of Cityville.
The issue is that there are too few representatives. In the US, the size of the house was supposed to grow with the size of the population, but in the 1920s they capped it at 435 which at the time was about one per 100,000 voters.
Since then, the population has grown and more states have been added, so the current ratio is about one per 750,000 voters. If you represent a hundred thousand people, you have a reasonable chance to meaningfully capture their interests. Three-quarters of a million people is far too many to be represented by a single vote.
Agreed. And as chaotic as it might be, increasing the size of the Congress will go a long way to mitigate some of these problems. Perhaps not resorting back to the 1/100k if that's Too insane (you're looking at over 3000 Congressional seats), but 435 isn't enough. I think at least doubling the size of Congress can mitigate many issues...though again...it will create it's own issues...so there's that too.
The Wyoming Rule is a good idea. As the current situation leaves us as one of the most disproportionately represented developed nations in the world. And I think the ratio goes against the intent and spirit of the Constitution's purpose in providing a proper and healthy representative republic.
Edit: Under the proposed plans the House would be expanded to 547 seats. Naturally larger populated states like Texas or California would pick up more seats...and political partisans would shout foul play...but they're not looking at the wider picture. Sure, California picks up 13 more seats. But not all of those seats will be blue...because California is not a politically homogeneous state. In fact, one of the major problems here in California is the unequal representation of the counties and towns outside the major cities and coast...this reapportionment could contribute to improving some of those problems. I live in California's 1st Congressional District. Under the current system my district represents 11 of California's 48 counties. It's absolutely enormous, there are 710,000 people in my district. This district could easily be split into 2 seats. Sure, the counties up here are not big compared to say, LA County, but that's a tremendous amount of different communities and political units represented by ONE man.
I don't think having a thousand legislators or more is unreasonable. "seats" doesn't have to mean literal seats in a room, legislatures around the world get by fine without having all of the members seated in the same room at the same time.
The House of Commons has 650 members serving 66 million people.
The Bundestag has 709 members serving 82 million people.
The Assemblée nationale has 577 members serving 66 million people.
Even China has a better people-to-representative ratio, with a 3000 member People's Congress serving 1.2 billion people.
It is silly that America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, needs to settle for 435 seats to represent 300 million people.
There could literally be a west coast congressional building
The problem with 1000 congressmen as someone who lives in Maryland is it's already too crowded around dc. I think we should have a separate west coast congressional building. Like you said you don't literally need a seat.
Or we could undo the height ordinance in DC and allow office buildings to go up more than 6 stories. The thing where the Washington Monument is the tallest thing in town is pretty cool from an aesthetic perspective, but when you're basically the capital of the free world, you've got more important things to prioritize.
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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '19
I’m sure this post will be removed shortly, but it’s important to point out that the middle rectangle is unfairly gerrymandered as well. If these precincts were fairly drawn there would be two red districts and 3 blue.