Congressional Redistricting

Something I have often championed as a cure for the stagnancy of the House of Representatives is independent Congressional redistricting instead of the political approach used in almost every state. Not many disagree that Gerrymandering is bad, it has become so bad with the advent of advanced software that makes optimizing populations for incumbents so easy, that David Broder likened our House to Britain's House of Lords.

But Steven Hill writes an interesting article that is critical of non-political redistricting as a cure-all:

For instance, in Arizona, where an independent panel delineates districts, all eight Congressional incumbents won re-election last year with an average margin of victory of 34 percent. In the State Senate, none of the 30 seats were competitive; in fact, more than half of the seats were uncontested by one of the two major parties (even though Arizona has public financing of elections, which should encourage more candidates). Other states that use independent or bipartisan redistricting commissions of one kind or another, like Iowa, New Jersey and Washington, also had mostly noncompetitive Congressional elections in 2004.

The problem is not who draws the legislative lines -- it's where people live. Take a look at a map of California that shows which areas voted for John Kerry and which voted for President Bush. It looks the same as the map for Al Gore and Mr. Bush four years earlier. It will look much the same for the Republican and Democratic candidates in 2008.

As they have in many states, regional partisan leanings in California have become entrenched over the past 20 years, with the heavily populated coastal areas and cities dominated by Democrats and the more sparsely populated interior dominated by Republicans. It's a statewide version of the national political map.

Hill continues, pointing out that truly competitive districts would violate the Voting Rights Act that seeks to ensure minority representation in Congress.

But while Hill is effective in criticizing the status-quo, his solution is not the answer:

We can't change where people choose to live, but we can begin using some type of proportional representation system. For example, California could use a system like that in Peoria, Ill., for municipal elections. Instead of electing 40 state senators from 40 districts, voters in 10 districts could elect four senators each. Any candidate who won at least a quarter of the vote would earn a seat. These districts would be far more likely to be bipartisan, even electing some urban Republicans and rural Democrats.

Taking away the winner takes all system that ensures our two party system is not one that we should take lightly, or attempt to convince people of in a paragraph. Somehow Britain which has a winner take all system, and thus has a three party system, is able to keep seats for Parliament competitive, though suburban dominance in the US might make us uniquely different than the British. Although I have no answers to the problem at hand, I ought to stand corrected on my championing of Independent redistricting commissions.

-Mr. Alec