The Absolute Gerrymandering Fix

Unless you’ve been sleeping for the past 20 years, or you’ve abdicated your rights as a citizen and ignore all things political, you should know that one of the major problems facing our democracy is how states map congressional districts. The worst of this started in 2003 in Texas when state lawmakers altered congressional districts in such a way, that in the 2004 elections Republicans won state majority’s for the first time in 130 years.

Other states followed with redistricting to favor the state ruling party (based on governorship). There are many cases where the actual vote count for each party is misaligned with its apportionment of elected congress officials.

I did some quick research and have found no evidence that creating districts is a legally binding action. The constitution only mentions apportionment. Nowhere does it say that lines should be drawn and that elections held for individual congressional seats.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.

Of course it seems obvious that a state would just divvy up the apportionment, map out districts, and hold elections. That was fine when our country had a few million people, even up to 200 million people. But we now have over 300 million citizens and this system is no longer “representative” of the will of its citizens.

Gerrymandering has taken root, as it did in Texas, in Wisconsin, and in other states. Political parties (both Republicans and Democrats) have used redistricting to their advantage. And it’s fair to say that drawing legitimately representational districts is difficult if not impossible.

So what’s the answer? Abolish the concept of congressional districts all together.

Each state runs elections this way. Each political party is allowed to run any number of candidates up to the apportionment of the state. So in Illinois, each party could run up to 18 candidates. Voters cast ballots for candidates but they also vote for party or no-party (independent). Once the votes are tallied, the congressional seats are filled by percentage of total state vote for each party.

In the 2016 election in Illinois, 5,241,641 people voted in congressional elections. Of that total, 53.62% of the votes were to democrats and 45.74% to republicans. No other party reached a solid 1% so we cannot apportion any candidate to a third party or independent. Given the 18 congressional districts apportioned to Illinois, this would provide 10 seats to democrats and 8 seats to republicans. The top 10 democratic candidates by would win those seats. The top 8 republicans by vote would win the remaining seats.

In 2016, the actual counts were 11 districts to democrats and 7 to republicans. The statewide election process would offer +1 congressional seats to the GOP, but it would be entirely fair and true representation would be achieved.

I took this idea and re-calculated the results from the 2016 election data. The results are very enlightening about gerrymandering’s success:

It’s very simple and obvious. If every vote should count and our country should have fair representation, then the GOP should have 214 seats, the Democrats 209 seats, and there should be 13 independently held seats.

Gerrymandering is giving the GOP a net gain of 37 seats and independents are completely shut out of the process. People who voted independent are not even allowed representation in our current district-based system.

But there’s a bigger problem. There’s this pervasive belief that there’s a “silent majority” in favor of conservative principles. This is factually incorrect. The reality is that our country is 49%/48%/3% split GOP/Dem/Ind. There is no silent or overwhelming majority. Our country is evenly divided.

Another big problem is what happens when gerrymandering impacts actual legislation. Instead of compromise, we get hard right (or in the past hard left) legislation that leaves half of the country unhappy. This is why compromise is so important. It may upset the extreme right or left, but it will win over the country as a whole and be in our country’s best interests as a whole.

If we enacted this process, we could eliminate the primary system, which shouldn’t play a part in our process anymore. True representation should come from the people, not party elders.