There are a <i>ton</i> of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because :<p>Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized)
e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2]<p>Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parties and across the political spectrum, the only people fighting for it are those currently in power (on both sides) [3]<p>Partisan gerrymandering disenfranchises a large portion of voters, whose votes end up “not counting” b/c of how district lines are drawn[4]<p>Because of this, I'm currently fundraising (from friends and family) for the legal team in the North Carolina case [1]. I've committed significant amount personally to the fundraise and can say that this is arguably one of the highest leverage ways to spent dollars that you can get to get America back on track as a representative democracy.<p>I've done a lot of research on this - if you want to help (with $$) or just want to learn more, feel free to reach out (valgui [at] gmail.com)<p>[1]<a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNCvRucho%20One%20Pager.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNC...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tight-senate-race-senate-candidates-move-to-center.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tig...</a>
[3]<a href="http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party_Lines_Oppose_Common_Gerrymandering_Practices.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party...</a>
[4]<a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-gerrymandering-20170505-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-ge...</a>
To me, the problem is winner-take-all districts to begin with. It all but ensures some constituents are going to be sorely disappointed. Why not consider something like multi-member districts? We could tune it even further by awarding variable voting power. Then the way the borders are drawn becomes far less relevant. I'm sure there are tradeoffs, but it would certainly be more representative.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that we're making more and more centralized decisions. Federalism properly done lessens the pressure to come up with complex gerrymandering and voting schemes by lessening the election pressure altogether.<p>It adds more power to other important democratic mechanisms: free speech and vote-with-your-feet.<p>The power of free speech is improved because a state legislator has fewer constituents, so each group of 100 with similar interests matters a lot more.<p>And, at the end of the day, if a city or state is really screwing things up, people (not everyone, but enough) can relocate to somewhere that is doing a better job.<p>Eliminating gerrymandering (how? how will it get passed?) and new voting schemes (which? how will it get passed?) are interesting, but federalism already exists (10th amendment), it's just underemphasized.
It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.
As others have noted, proportional representation (PR) is the best solution to gerrymandering. (Not arguing that we shouldn't also support second-best solutions like nonpartisan redistricting and court challenges to the worst gerrymanders.)<p>The three PR methods in common use are STV-with-multimember-districts; mixed-member proportional (MMP); and open (or, yuck, closed) list systems. All of these (except closed lists) are decent, but have downsides. STV leads to very complex ballots; MMP leads to "two classes" of representatives; open list focuses your voting power on the partisan choice, but doesn't give you much power to help set the direction of your favorite party. And all three can lead to extreme party fragmentation and thus excess "kingmaker" power for splinter parties, unless there are rules against that.<p>It is, however, possible to design a method without any of these downsides. Perfection is impossible, but the Pareto frontier is, and none of the above methods are on it. Here's one that is:<p><a href="http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegated_(GOLD)_voting" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegat...</a><p>Here's an article about why it's good:<p><a href="https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-i-pr-225f4aea34bb" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-...</a>
Instead of using math to rewrite districts, do something else:<p>Change the ballot.<p>Ranked voting is better than First Past the Post (what we use) but the one with the BEST statistical properties and simplest exanation is the Approval Vote.<p>Simply be able to mark more than one candidate.<p>This way Bernie or Bloomberg could have run and taken the whole thing. As opposed to staying out because of fear "a vote for X is a vote against Y".<p>Maine did it. They switched! Now 49 more states to go.<p>This can be done at a local level in some places. Any district that does this will become less politically polarized and people won't be so fearful and hate each other less :)
This article from 2013 puts it at D+7.1 overall for the House:<p><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymanders-more-democrats-or-republicans/" rel="nofollow">http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymande...</a><p>What surprises me, though, is how little attention is given to caucuses in the US presidential primaries. The turnout is very low and they're subject to strong arming and party insider corruption in both major parties.
The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters?<p>Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowledge and competence. Their job would be to advise on and implement the policy goals chosen by ballot measures.<p>Figuring out some way to allow direct ballot/referendum securely and efficiently would be more welcome than re-jigging the USA to bring it into line with one of the other countries that has an elite class shuffling between ruling in the interests of businesses and remunerating themselves as leaders of those businesses.
One of the most reasonable rules I've heard IMO for deterring voting districts:<p>> In each section (at first a state, etc), find a dividing line that splits the population in two.<p>This seems somewhat reasonable, and there's no way for humans to bias it.<p>Here's some pictures of what this looks like [1], and the write up of this idea [2]<p>[1]:<a href="http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png" rel="nofollow">http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png</a><p>[2]:<a href="http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html" rel="nofollow">http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html</a>
If you redesign the districts to be purely on population you'll skew policy so hard towards urban life that you destroy the rural, agricultural base of the country.<p>If you care at all about being provided with food, it is unwise to ignore those who live outside of a city or you cut your own throat.<p>Democrats don't seem to get this because they care too much about their social issues, and Republicans aren't much better about this for the last decade.<p>Only Trump seems to have figured this out and smartly got rural America on his side.
The real solution to preventing gerrymandering is to get rid of congressional districts altogether, and move to proportionally representative delegations from each state. Afterall, there is absolutely no constitutional basis for partitioning states into districts.
Geometry of Redistricting: Summer School <a href="http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/" rel="nofollow">http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/</a><p>It is open to the public and free of charge
Does it fix <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud</a>