I just heard about the Fair Representation Act, which seems to aim to do a lot to inhibit the impact of gerrymandering.
More information about it:
FairVote is a national champion for the Fair Representation Act, which would allow voters to use ranked choice voting in multi-member distri
Ask your representative to support it with a couple clicks:
I just emailed my U.S. Representative, asking them to support the Fair Representation Act! Join me by doing the same: [@campaign]
(Put in your information, and it will identify your representative and auto-fill an example email. Sending something is more important than what you write, so you can just send that template if you don't have time/desire to write something else!)
The Fair Representation Act Could Reshape Maryland Elections — and Hand Republicans Seats Democrats Have Locked Away for Years
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews – Annapolis Watch
A national election-reform proposal backed for years by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is facing renewed scrutiny after modeling from its own supporters revealed an unexpected outcome: under a “fair” proportional voting system, Maryland Republicans — long shut out of most U.S. House seats — would gain meaningful representation again.
The reform…
The Fair Representation Act Could Reshape Maryland Elections — and Hand Republicans Seats Democrats Have Locked Away for Years
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews – Annapolis Watch
A national election-reform proposal backed for years by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is facing renewed scrutiny after modeling from its own supporters revealed an unexpected outcome: under a “fair” proportional voting system, Maryland Republicans — long shut out of most U.S. House seats — would gain meaningful representation again.
The reform…
Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around
Matt Kerbel at Wolves and Sheep:
At least they’re open about it.
When Donald Trump commanded Texas Republicans to conduct a mid-decade redistricting, he said it’s because Republicans are “entitled to five more seats” there.
[I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.]
Well, ok. I didn’t realize that’s how it works.
The problem is that while Trump is brazen about what he’s doing, for once he’s not breaking the law. Although the Texas gerrymander could run afoul of voting rights provisions, the fact that they’re dicing their districts mid-decade will not.
And that’s a problem.
We are living through an arms race of sorts as Democrats scramble to counter Republican efforts to gerrymander the map to their benefit in red states by skewing the map to their benefit in blue states. However necessary the Democrats’ response may be, it levels a distorted playing field.
If we intend to reclaim democracy for the twenty-first century, we need to put the gerrymander behind us.
When political parties draw district lines, representatives get to choose their voters. If a district is safe from inter-party competition, all the action takes place in the primary campaign of the favored party. The only question is whether voters will nominate someone who is extreme—or very extreme. And incumbents have no incentive to moderate their views when they just want to head off primary challenges because they aren’t afraid of their general election opponents.
But when district lines are neutral, voters get to choose their representatives. In competitive districts, all the action takes place in the general election campaign. Candidates from both parties are motivated to take moderate positions that appeal to swing voters. The winning candidate—with an eye on re-election—goes to Washington incentivized to compromise and get things done.
That’s how it’s supposed to work in a democracy.
To be fair, even neutral lines will create a lot of single-party districts because of how we have self-sorted into blue cities and suburbs, and red rural areas and small towns. We’ll tackle that problem in a minute.
[...]
There are no shortages of suggestions for how to achieve equitable representation in Congress.
Congress did not pass the Fair Representation Act when it was first introduced in the House in 2017, or when it was introduced again in 2019. But it should have a chance in a Democratic Congress with a Democratic president elected on a mandate to clean up the damage left by MAGA.
The act would put nonpartisan commissions in charge of redistricting in every state, with the requirement that no party could claim an advantage from their work. The commission would have to operate with transparency, and the resulting districts would need to meet common-sense criteria like keeping communities together. In other words, no more slicing up blue urban areas and attaching the shards to large swatches of red rural territory.
But it went further.
It also mandated multimember representation in states with more than one representative and called for ranked choice voting.
Multimember districts would be a dramatic departure from how we currently elect members of Congress, and could produce a legislature that genuinely reflects the population.
In our single-member district system, the candidate who wins the most votes gets all the representation. So you don’t have a prayer of being represented if you are a Democratic voter in a rural district in Oklahoma or a Republican voter in pretty much any district in Massachusetts.
That disenfranchises a lot of people. Even in a lopsided red district where the Republican routinely wins 70% of the vote, the remaining 30% find themselves without a voice.
Rather than sending one representative to Congress, what if that district sent three members instead? Chances are that two of them would be Republicans and one of them would be a Democrat, reflecting the demographics of the district. Everyone would be represented in proportion to their share of the population.
The Fair Representation Act would create fewer districts with more members in each—typically between three and five—while keeping the total number of representatives from each state constant.
Then it would institute ranked choice voting, which allows voters to select multiple candidates in their order of preference. Instead of voting for one candidate, voters would rank their first, second, and third choices, and so on down the line. Votes are then counted in rounds. In the first round, all the first place votes are tabulated. The candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated, and their second place votes are distributed among the remaining candidates. The process continues until a candidate receives a majority of votes, or—in multiple member districts—until there is a final ranking of candidates equal to the number of available seats.
This is an entirely unfamiliar way to conduct elections in America. And it has a number of important benefits for democracy.
Multimember districts with ranked choice voting would promote compromise and reduce congressional gridlock. They would also make representation more reflective of the population. As election outcomes better mirror the electorate, we should see an increase in the number of women and people of color in Congress.
Independent redistricting, multi-member districts, and proportional representation are creative ways to reform representation. They are also not the only ways.
We could also expand the size of the House. That hasn’t been done since 1929, when it was fixed at 435 members—but the population of the country has tripled since then, and that’s created crowded districts of varying sizes.
Here are some solid redistricting reforms for future elections that should be considered: Mixed-member proportional districts, ranked choice voting, and/or expanding the House capacity.
