[Suntzu]

We could develop a computer program to develop congressional districts that contained almost identical populations in a given state and have the most compact borders. Minorities would lose. There whould be fewer Black or Hispanic districts. Gerrymandering is O.K. as long as it benefits minorities.

[Doug64]

We could develop a computer program to develop congressional districts that contained almost identical populations in a given state and have the most compact borders. Minorities would lose. There whould be fewer Black or Hispanic districts. Gerrymandering is O.K. as long as it benefits minorities.

It’s not just okay, majority-minority districts are mandated by the courts — their gift to the Republican Party.

[Steve_American]

Suntzu & Doug64,
The computer program could easily be programmed to try to keep "communities" in one district. Obviously, a minority community would fall into this category. But then, so would rural whites and urban whites, etc. Is this bad? I don't know as of now.
So, certainly there would be some majority-minority districts. Would there be more or less than now? Hard to say. As of now urban Blacks are often split into 2 or more districts to dilute the Dems votes. [All the above, assuming your idea of keeping single Rep. districts.]
However, my system allows minorities to vote for one of their own as a bullet vote. So, my system lets minorities get more Reps. in Congress. Surely, Blacks could get 1 from each large city and maybe 2 from some.
If the Blacks Dems are going to bullet vote anyway, parties might divide into 2 parts if they have 2 major wings. So, Blacks could vote for Black Dems and white Dems could vote for the best Dems. In Congress they reunite to form one voting caucus. This way the ballot shows the voters what sub-party the candidates belong to. This would help the party leaders instruct their voters how to vote to maximize the benefit (i.e., get the most Reps. into the House) for the party as a whole.

BTW, in states where there are some large districts [like the Calif. case I mentioned in the OP] the larger* districts should be centered in the cities, as much as possible. In states that are mostly large districts and a few smaller ones, then maybe the large ones should be in the rural areas and the small ones in the cities. Maybe. [For example if a state had 19 Reps., it would have 4 districts; 4+5+5+5. If it had 5 districts they would have 4+4+4+4+3 Reps., and I don't want many 3 Rep. districts.]

. * . Here "large" means having more people in them. Obviously, the districts that get 5 Reps. get more because they have 25% more people than a district that gets the normal 4 Reps..

[Steve_American]

I have a new thought on this idea.

Maybe all huge cities [like NY, NY or LA, CA] should be one district with as many Reps. as its population calls for. Using numbers from my memory, this would give NY, NY about 12 Reps.. This would apply to all the US cities that would get 4 or more Reps.

This idea avoids dividing these cities into smaller districts. This avoids any arguments about where the lines should be drawn. They just follow the city limits.

The city's suburbs would need to be put into a few districts of the right size. No need to follow their city limits. Although it would be best.

For example, in Colo., Denver and Aurora are now twin cities. Neither is large enough to have even 2 Reps.. Colo. currently has 7 Reps., so it would be divided into 2 districts. One centered over Denver/Aurora and the other being the rest of the rural parts of the state. One would have 3 Reps. and 1 would have 4 Reps.. I'm not sure which district should get 4 Reps., but I lean toward the Denver one. It would need to include all the suburbs, though.

BTW -- I would like to( at the same time) expand the House to about 500 members. Five-100 being the number of people that most people can get to know very well. For example it is the size of an Army Infantry Battalion. More members would let the current members be more confidant that they could keep their seats during the change over. I hope the current chamber could be remodeled to seat 500 members.

[Steve_American]

I will confess that until now I was thinking about how party members (R & D) would be able to use the system. I was not thinking about how Independents would use this system. So, now my thoughts on how Ind. should use the system.

Independents could just vote for the 4 (normally 4, but however many Reps their district gets) best candidates, in their opinion.
To concentrate their votes on the best of the best candidates, they could also vote for fewer than the maximum the district gets. Or, they could bullet vote for the one very best candidate.

BTW -- what happens if a voter votes for more than the number of Reps for that district. IMO the counting machines should just split their 1 vote and give an equal fraction to all the candidates that they voted for. This is better than not counting that vote at all, right?

[Sivad]

I proposed this on another site and only the Europeans liked it.

1st a fact, the US Constitution allows the Congress to tell the states how to run their system of electing their Representatives. I looked it up.

My solution is for Congress to demand that all the states whenever possible have districts with more than one Rep.
1] The ideal number is 4 Reps. per district.
2] 7 states get just 1 Rep., so they can't be gerrymandered now. Leave them as they are now.
3] Some states get 2 to 5 Reps., so they would all be elected from 1 district.
4] Etc. See below.

Each voter would still gets just 1 vote, but they could split their 1 vote into fractions. All they need to do is vote for more than 1 Rep. and the computer counting machine would auto-split their vote *evenly* between those they voted for.
The votes of all the candidates running are totaled and the top vote getters would be elected to the set number of seats for that district.

It's a good idea, a few states already have multi-member districts and it does improve representation. I'm not clear on the vote splitting though, wouldn't it work just as well to accord each representative whatever portion of the vote they receive?

[Steve_American]

Sivad, thank you for your on point reply and for liking the idea.

You wrote, "I'm not clear on the vote splitting though, wouldn't it work just as well to accord each representative whatever portion of the vote they receive?"
. . Sorry, I failed to be clear enough. I let voters vote a fractional vote for each of a few candidates so parties can see to it easily that all of their candidates get the same number of votes. If each voter could vote for just 1 candidate then, how can a party spread out their votes evenly? [BTW, a few party leaders would vote for less than the full slate just to avoid all of them being tied and not winning enough seats for all of them.
. . As to the bolded part, I don't understand your question. The system must decide which 4 candidates become Reps in a 4 Rep. district [or other number in other number of Reps. districts]. I let the 4 top vote getters be the ones elected. At to bottom of my OP I said that each elected Rep. could be given [#of votes he got/1000] votes [he can't split them] to use when voting in the House. This totally eliminates the benefit of gerrymandering.
. . For, example take a state that gets just 5 Reps., all of them are elected from 1 district. If the final vote was 49.5% Repud and 51.5% Dem (here ignoring all votes for other parties because they didn't win) and so 3 Dems and 2 Repuds were elected as the Reps., then the 2 Repud Reps would have almost the same total votes in the House as the total of the 3 Dems would have.

[Sivad]

That approach would seem to favor parties over voters and further entrench the party system. That's a big problem with this kind of proportional representation. One way around that would be a system of share voting in the legislature where every district is allocated the same number of shares and the voting power of each representative is proportional to the percentage of votes they receive. So if every district is allocated say ten thousand shares and a candidate wins 53.85% of the vote their voting power in the legislature would be 5,385 shares.

[Steve_American]

Sivad,
I'm sorry but you still didn't explain who the winning Reps were going to be.
Are you saying that anyone who runs and gets enough votes gets a seat in the US House?
Are there enough desks in the House chamber for that? What committees would they serve on?
My system would open up the system much more to minor parties.
I think the "party system" is already entrenched. Note: I didn't say "2 party system".

[Sivad]

Sivad,
I'm sorry but you still didn't explain who the winning Reps were going to be.
Are you saying that anyone who runs and gets enough votes gets a seat in the US House?

Yes. There could be a minimum vote requirement of 15% or 20% with instant runoff for voters whose candidates don't meet that threshold. That would only be 4 or 5 reps per district which is what your solution calls for.

Are there enough desks in the House chamber for that?

The US legislature is 26th in the world in terms of number of members. We could double the number and we would still have a few hundred less than the UK which is a country with less than a quarter of our population.

What committees would they serve on?

Congressional reform is also much needed and long overdue but that's a separate issue.

[Steve_American]

Yes. There could be a minimum vote requirement of 15% or 20% with instant runoff for voters whose candidates don't meet that threshold. That would only be 4 or 5 reps per district which is what your solution calls for.

The US legislature is 26th in the world in terms of number of members. We could double the number and we would still have a few hundred less than the UK which is a country with less than a quarter of our population.

Congressional reform is also much needed and long overdue but that's a separate issue.

Gerrymandering is back in the news.
To summarize my ideas for you-all again ---
1] Use the power granted to Congress in the original Constitution for Congress to direct the States in how they should do their elections of the House.
2] Increase the size of the House by 50%, more or less.
3] Allocate seats in the House to each state more or less as is now done.
4] Do *not* have each district have its own Representative. Instead, have larger districts with 4 to 7 Reps. each. About 30% of the states would have just one House district. Many would have 2 districts. But, Calif. would have over 20. All the districts must be the same size or that size plus 1. So for example, all the districts in a given state must have 4 or 5 Reps.; another state must have 6 or 7 in each district, etc.
5] Each voter would cast 1 vote, but he/she could split that vote easily into equal fractions simply by voting for more than one candidate. This would usually be all for one party, but it isn't required.
6] The parties could run more than one candidate.
7] The counting process machines would automatically split the votes of those who voted for more than 1 and keep track of the fractions.
8] Voters should be given a 2nd choice if not even 1 of their 1st choice(s) got enough votes.
9] The candidates who got the most votes wins, up to the number of Reps. for that individual district.

A new idea of mine. The same law could require that every state use a Jungle Primary open to all voters with the results being the selection of 2.31R (round to nearest) candidates to be on the final ballet, with R being the number of Reps. for that district.
. . . Again, the voters all get 1 vote but can split it into equal fractions. Then the same system is used. So again, all voters would get a 2nd choice if none of her 1st choices made the cut.
. . . To even get on to the Jungle Primary ballot a candidate (or his/her party for them) would have to get signatures or something. I might even let individuals buy their way onto the ballot, why not? Then they can skip the step of paying people to collect signatures and go straight to trying to get voters to vote for them.

Sivad, if I understood you right then, if 4 Reps were seated in every district that there would be 435 x 4 = 1740 Reps. in total in the House. My system also reduced the number of districts as well as having more than 1 Rep. per dist. I may have missed where you also reduced the number of districts, though.

Yes, I can see in these times that many would want to reduce the power of the parties. I think my system would do this by letting 3rd and 4th parties compete for votes and win seats in the House. To fight off this threat I think the 2 major parties would have to cater to more voters. Also, see my new idea for Jungle Primaries.

And to you-all; yes, I know this can only pass if the people somehow make it pass.

If the people have the power to do the above then maybe they would have to power to have most of the powers of the President be transferred to a Prime Minister who is elected by majority vote of all the House Members plus all the Senators. The remaining powers [like the pardon power] would be retained by the head of state President who is elected as he/she is now or some other way.

[Sivad]

2] Increase the size of the House by 50%, more or less.

We should at least triple the number of representatives. In 1912 the population of the US was 95 million and the House had 435 seats, today the population of the US is is 325 million and the House is still only apportioned 435 seats. Limiting the number of legislators is great for the bottom line of the corporate oligarch, but it's not so great for democracy. We definitely need multi-member districts where each Representative's voting power is proportional to the percentage of the vote they received. The first past-the-post winner-take-all electoral system is antidemocratic.

[Sivad]

Gerrymandering is back in the news.
Sivad, if I understood you right then, if 4 Reps were seated in every district that there would be 435 x 4 = 1740 Reps. in total in the House. My system also reduced the number of districts as well as having more than 1 Rep. per dist. I may have missed where you also reduced the number of districts, though.

I don't think 2000 reps would necessarily be a problem for a country as large as the US, many countries that are much smaller than the US have parliaments around that size(proportionally). France has a population of 65 million(1/5 of the US) and has a 925 member legislature.

[Sivad]

Abolish Primary Elections
Pildes believes we should end primary elections and replace them with a system of instant-runoff voting where multiple candidates from different parties run in the same race against one another. Such systems have already been implemented in cities like Minneapolis and San Francisco.

Instant runoff voting, says Pildes, “collapses the primary election and the general election into a single event. So everybody only has to show up only once.”

[Suntzu]

Blacks vote for Blacks, Whites vote for Whites, Mexicans vote for Mexicans, a simple fact of life. If every district reflected the racial makeup of the country no Blacks or Mexicans would likely ever be elected. On a smaller scale we can examine areas with large minority populations. Take South Texas as an example. The majority of the population is of Mexican decent. Spanish is spoken as often as English. Just about every elected office is held by a Mexican, what a surprise! There is no effort to create "safe" Black or Anglo (what the Mexicans call us) districts.

[Steve_American]

I don't think 2000 reps would necessarily be a problem for a country as large as the US, many countries that are much smaller than the US have parliaments around that size(proportionally). France has a population of 65 million(1/5 of the US) and has a 925 member legislature.

I'll reply to all your replies in one reply.
Just because France or whatever nation has a large legislature does not make it a good thing.
It seems like you want to have each Rep. in the House represent fewer people. I.e. bring the Reps closer to their constituents.
I favor keeping the size of the House such that very Rep. can know every other Rep. by name and face. They will never be all that close to their voters so having them know who they are working with seems better.

As for eliminating primaries --- I worry about asking the voters to learn about too many candidates all at one time.
It might be too much for the voters with my system with 2 separate elections and more candidates.
It may also cause strange results like Trumps election where too many people stayed home. In this case it might be, too many people don't realize what the people they are voting for really think.

[Sivad]

Just because France or whatever nation has a large legislature does not make it a good thing.

In France's case it produces more democratic outcomes. All the successful European democracies have proportionally larger legislatures and they all have a higher degree of democracy. The US ranks below all of them on the Democracy Index.

It seems like you want to have each Rep. in the House represent fewer people. I.e. bring the Reps closer to their constituents.

That's the idea. It increases accountability in a number of ways.

I favor keeping the size of the House such that very Rep. can know every other Rep. by name and face. They will never be all that close to their voters so having them know who they are working with seems better.

Why?

As for eliminating primaries --- I worry about asking the voters to learn about too many candidates all at one time.

Too many is better than too few, and anyway I doubt it would be that much more than what we have with the party primary system. The only difference would be the voters would have real choices instead of rigged primaries and selectoral politics.

It may also cause strange results like Trumps election where too many people stayed home. In this case it might be, too many people don't realize what the people they are voting for really think.

Yeah, but that's not that big of a problem with multi-member proportional representation. And Congress already has plenty of little Trumps anyway.

[Steve_American]

In France's case it produces more democratic outcomes. All the successful European democracies have proportionally larger legislatures and they all have a higher degree of democracy. The US ranks below all of them on the Democracy Index.

That's the idea. It increases accountability in a number of ways.

Why?

Too many is better than too few, and anyway I doubt it would be that much more than what we have with the party primary system. The only difference would be the voters would have real choices instead of rigged primaries and selectoral politics.

Yeah, but that's not that big of a problem with multi-member proportional representation. And Congress already has plenty of little Trumps anyway.

Why? --- Because it is better if every Rep. knows personally every other Rep. Knows when to believe them and when to trust them.

My Jungle Primary with 2.31 candidates advancing to the final election for each Rep. that the district is entitled to, seems to me to give the voters plenty of choices. I assume that there would mostly be 4 or 5 or maybe 6 Reps per district. This would mean that with 5 Reps. for a district there would be 12 candidates advancing. And there would be about twice that in the Primary. Only twice because Parties would rather not run 6 or 8 candidates in a 6 Rep. district. Twentyfour seems like plenty of choices for the voters to choose from. It may even be too many. However, many voters would (I think) focus on just a few parties and/or independents. So, it might not be so bad.

Just yesterday I was watching a TED talk about love and dating and the Anthropologist speaker claimed that research on "over choice" indicated that past about 7 or 8 choices most people become overwhelmed and choose not to make any choice at all. If this is true then what does this say about elections with too many candidates on the ballot?