Having all of Congress be at-large would essentially eliminate gerrymandering by just letting any majority in a state decide everything.
I think thats the single worst change we could make, beating out term limits. ~Because if only lobbyists and staffers can be long-term careers we’d never have principled professional politicians, just short-term figureheads~
“At Large” means that the senators would be elected by the whole state, which is the only way to avoid gerrymandering and identical to how the current rules work.
It’s not the only way. Larger multi-member districts also work.
And while we’re re-writing the whole constitution, we could do lots of things. Like requiring algorithmically generated districts, to remove the possibility of any arbitrary bias.
Algorithmically generated districts just give a sharper target, and allowing the existing systems to include multi-member districts just makes gerrymanding easier.
The only way to prevent gerrymandering is with either districts that don’t change (statewide), or changing the rules of the legislature so gerrymandering doesnt matter
My favorite potential fix is direct proxy voting. Tie vote weight in the legislature to how many citizens voted for you, and send either the top N vote-getters or everyone who gets at least X% of the votes cast to the legislature.
You can pick a specific algorithm based on nothing but population, without any demographics. Thus impossible to gerrymander. The Shortest Splitline is one. Another I don’t remember the name of draws circles around the densest population centers as big as they need to be to include the required number of people.
Passing government functions off to a computer only encourages corruption and distortion in either the implementation, the input, or how the output is handled.
It’s like trying to engineer anti-cheat on a system where not only does the user own their own hardware but also the marketplace vendors, the courts, the OS vendors, and your servers.
CA can have four at-large seats for the whole state up for election every two years.
They would have the same long-view that existing senators have, and would not be internally less responsive than the current system
That sounds great.
Just use that in the House.
Having all of Congress be at-large would essentially eliminate gerrymandering by just letting any majority in a state decide everything.
I think thats the single worst change we could make, beating out term limits. ~Because if only lobbyists and staffers can be long-term careers we’d never have principled professional politicians, just short-term figureheads~
What does “be at-large” mean?
We’re talking about a kind of stagered multi-member districts.
“At Large” means that the senators would be elected by the whole state, which is the only way to avoid gerrymandering and identical to how the current rules work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-large
It’s not the only way. Larger multi-member districts also work.
And while we’re re-writing the whole constitution, we could do lots of things. Like requiring algorithmically generated districts, to remove the possibility of any arbitrary bias.
Algorithmically generated districts just give a sharper target, and allowing the existing systems to include multi-member districts just makes gerrymanding easier.
The only way to prevent gerrymandering is with either districts that don’t change (statewide), or changing the rules of the legislature so gerrymandering doesnt matter
My favorite potential fix is direct proxy voting. Tie vote weight in the legislature to how many citizens voted for you, and send either the top N vote-getters or everyone who gets at least X% of the votes cast to the legislature.
Don’t know what you mean by sharper target.
You can pick a specific algorithm based on nothing but population, without any demographics. Thus impossible to gerrymander. The Shortest Splitline is one. Another I don’t remember the name of draws circles around the densest population centers as big as they need to be to include the required number of people.
Passing government functions off to a computer only encourages corruption and distortion in either the implementation, the input, or how the output is handled.
It’s like trying to engineer anti-cheat on a system where not only does the user own their own hardware but also the marketplace vendors, the courts, the OS vendors, and your servers.