Posted on 07/25/2025 6:04:06 AM PDT by eccentric
I was thinking of allocating districts by last name.
So your representative could potentially cover the entire state? And then all the other representatives would cover the entire state? Logistically it wouldn’t make sense.
“Why are districts decided by location?”
In my youth my mom voted on a mechanical machine.
It had no idea of her age or her last name.
Nowadays here in Florida ballots are printed up specifically for each voter either when they show up to vote or are mailed out a ballot. Computers can deal with complexity easier than mechanical machine makers.
Perhaps a purely objectional reading of the Constitution would conclude that any other mention of "district" or "redistrict" would also assume it be defined by geographic location unless otherwise specified.
Yes, it seems to me that congressional districts need to cover certain geographic areas.
The idea of having a member of Congress represent people of certain income levels across the state, would make it impossible to have a geographic area as a congressional district.
So since we don't follow the explicit intent of the Framers anymore, I don't see the point in going any further in this discussion, our priority should be restoring proportional representation to the people.
One reason to allocate by location is so that if a city like Altoona needs say an interstate highway (so its factories can reliably send food products to market), it has somebody in the House of Representatives with a strong interest in seeing it funded and built.
Most adults in the Philadelphia suburbs couldn’t point out on an unlabeled map of Pennsylvania where Altoona is.
[I was in upscale Ardmore, Pennsylvania and not one member of a group of teenagers could point out where we were on a street map of the area.]
I think that gerrymandering is the big problem. I’d like to see states divided by vertical lines, and then each vertical slice subdivided by horizontal lines as needed to create districts with equal populations. Every district a mandatory parallelogram. As populations shift, move the vertical or horizontal lines a mile or so to adjust the number of voters. It should be a math exercise rather than an exercise in customizing a district so that we can be sure to get a black rep here, here, and here.
Why not just allow citizens to state what party they want their representative to be from and then proportionally allocate representatives to DC, even allowing the residents to keep their rep even if crossing state lines.
I like the current system.
What you’re describing is essentially “party-list proportional” elections. There are a number of different flavors and sub-flavors — and there are a few countries that construct their parliaments this way (Norway, Sweden, Israel, I think Poland and Spain as well). The details get messy - there are a LOT of variations in how the elections are conducted and how seats/winners are allocated.
I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea (though, I would oppose such a system; not that it matters because you’d need the mammoth constitutional rewrite in history to make it possible), but downsides to keep in mind:
- It strengthens the *federal* government. Regional parties DO exist in such systems, but the power of regions (states, provinces, etc) tend to be weakened.
- Of *course* you’d end up with a multi-party system. Everyone thinks that’s great... Until you discover that means you would REALLY have a nazi party, a communist party, and all manner of nutters that would almost certainly win at least a few seats. And often, the nutter parties can then wield out-sized influence.
- Unless your revision also eliminates the senate (most such parliaments are unicameral, not bicameral), you’d see dysfunction and inability to do *anything* (hey... maybe it’s NOT a terrible idea!)
Mr. Black, you are now a minority in our one district metropolitan area.
Mrs. Hispanic, I can only say things that would get me moderated on Free Republic.
When the nation was founded, most states didn’t even have Congressional districts. They simply elected at-large House members for the entire state. So if New York had 20 seats in the House, they held a single House election with a bunch of candidates, and the 20 who received the most votes were elected.
I’d rather see districts of equal populations delimited so as to minimize the total length of all district boundaries within each state, completely independently of any factor other than the locations of legal residents. Then redraw the districts after each census.
And if two people of different ages are involved in a dispute, which district is used?
And what happens when someone gets married and changes their last name?
And a married couple who are not the same age. When they cross the age line, one spouse is in one district and the other spouse is in a different one?
What a mess it could be to have so many districts in one geographical area, and that would be needed across the whole country.
Or are you proposing a nation wide district for each category? Then where would the judges actually sit and what about people who are filing cases who live far away?
I could see that simply making things far more complicated.
When the Nation was founded, you voted for a man who could represent you in Congress. People would then physically sit down with that man in a town hall meeting and let their desires be known. Next, that very same man would hop on a horse or carriage and physically go to Congress to work those legislative powers in cooperation with those other representatives from other physical places.
That very same guy would eventually return to his home, and the people would gather at the town hall to get a report how that congressional session went.
The people who went to those town hall meetings lived within a day's horseback ride from the town hall. Now, a census is performed every once in awhile to determine the number of people within the town hall's working radius. That count was used to seed additional representatives and a meeting place.
Somewhere along the line, those Congress Critters decided that they don't need to listen to us before they set off to Congress. They make crap up out of whole cloth, and then dictate our new rules from afar using electronic media or even the colluding news media. They still figure the number of those petty dictators based upon the population count of physical expanses of territory.
Geographic districting takes into account the issues that arise that affect an area, whereas any non-geographic method would obscure those issues, probably to the point that they are rarely addressed.
As an example, would it be equitable for a voter from a different town to decide your local school budget?
I think this violates the Founder's desire not to form “factions.” Within every district there will be multiple points of view. What they had in mind was that citizens would debate and discuss options, then accept a fair election—not just cling to preconceived teams and expect absolute conformity the way Democrats and labor unions do.
Because you and your neighbors have a shared vested interest. At least that’s the theory, once gerrymandering started districts aren’t nearly as based on location as they should be, sure they’re a contiguous region, but only on the most technical level.
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