Would you support a Constitutional Amendment like this in the US?

[OtterMan68]

All congressional districts must be drawn with only total population considered. Race, voting habits, income, religion, and ethnicity cannot be taken into account, and districts must be as geometrically compact as possible.

gerrymandered districts

[Anonymous]

What on Earth is the point of a congressional district at all if it does not reflect some distinctive group be it regional, ethic, religious, or cultural?

if you want to every congressional district simply to represent a generic portion of the people go to a referendum system, or if you must have the overhead of a representative move to proportional party representation system.


What your proposing is a dysfunctional half measure that makes a mockery of district based voting in abandoning propose of a district based representation while maintaining the non-relevant mechanics to break it.

Since we can't agree on what system is best, the ideal solution is to simply leave congressional distributing to the States who also define the election system.

Let some states maintain the system you suggest (which is already by imposed by Reynolds v. Sims (1964)) So you can see how it really works in the last 60 years.

Let some States experiment with Party proportional representation based on State wide popular vote.

Let some States go with a real district representation system where congressmen actually mean something and represent a unique interest again.

[OtterMan68]

but there are very few swing seats in the House. Most are safe republican or safe democrat. The STATES are letting the party in control game the system in their favor.

[Opinion Owner]

@otterman68
That is a product of a 2 party system in that there would only be the seats among the population which is marginally on either side, not necessarily a product of gerrymandering.

If you were to instead draw districts that mostly had a more diverse population you would indeed see big swings in the house. However that would bypass the system for the production of the minority in allowing small majorities to get super majority powers like in England. Rather than leaving such to the States where there is more agreement.

The alternative of just doing proportional party representation does the same thing except it ignores the individual's qualifications. (Remember in the house party line votes are still relatively uncommon meaning individual district interests are a thing).

Direct referendum system is direct democracy with no minority protection and will inevitably destroy itself as the proposition system in californa is doing to that state.

Lets talk about multi-party system A lot of people think this would be better, but lets game that out for a second:

If you have more parties say 6 it does mean every individual is better represented by said parties. But it also means they are just as much if not even less represented by their goverment as their party loses everything (out of power) as many time less in theory.

In practice for minorities of which ever larger and diverse countries like the USA are ever more dominated by, it means they are almost perpetually out of power as the largest political interest group dominates without compromise.

More than 2 parties only works in smaller relatively homogeneous countries where the differences between the parties are minor, or in situations where both of the parties are effectively hijacked by a non-representative minority. (no real primary process).

[OtterMan68]

so you think ending gerrymandering would lead to a multiparty system?

[Opinion Owner]

@otterman68 No, not only can you not end gerrymandering given how subjective it is and the standards you set. We know from the example of States that have too few districts to do it, that it has nothing to do with the 2 party system.

Once again ending the 2 party system would not improve your circumstances in fact it would likely make things a lot worse, by creating governments that are opposed by the large majority of the population on fundamental incompatible policy issues. I don't see how the union would survive such a arrangement. As the other parties of the other regions would easily find the support and power to rebel and overwhelm the central goverment.

America is way bigger with way more diverse and divergent interest than Canada.

That said if you wanted to end the 2 party system anyway you would get rid of the 50%+1 electoral cottage rule, and implement prepositional voting in most of the states.

[NathanDavis]

Congress won't... so it doesn't matter

[exitseven]

I would support this and add that only American citizens and legal residents can be counted.

[gorydetails]

Nope. Not a federal issue.