What does this even mean? Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that "partisanship" is unconstitutional?
Proportional representation in a legislative body only makes sense in the context of our own constitution if state legislatures eliminate House districts and apportion their House representation based on party affiliation. In effect, every House race is replaced by an "at-large" election within a state, and the House members apportioned according to the results.
Pennsylvania, for example, has 18 House seats. If they hold a House election and 55% of the votes are cast for Democrats and 45% for Republicans (I'm ignoring the unaffiliated and minor parties for the sake of this example), then the Democrats get 10 House seats and the Republicans get 8.
I'm not sure this is a good way to allocate seats in Congress, but I don't believe there are any constitutional problems with it.
A republican congressman lost his seat in Maine because of proportional voting.
It sounds like that would have an affect on what Chicago’s done
What’s not being looked at is how Chicago wards have been redistricted. Chicago has had neighborhoods divided to create “Hispanic”residential sections going to Hispanic aldermanic and congressional (Gutierez) candidates and blacks going to black candidates.Which apparently is the result of the turnover in the Freddie and Fanny mortgage collapse. As stable integrated areas changed into being unstable because of constant dwelling turnover.had the effect of breaking up a contiguous geographic continuity and community identity. Because the wards affected which are really like small towns have had sections broken up into areas where if a problem arises in a given section of street which has one way traffic only. It may be two way a block down because it’s in a different ward. The same applies to all other city services including zoning and sanitation where garbage collection routes are organized by ward boundaries,
From the article:
“Of course, it is not uncommon for appellate judges to raise positions they do not support in order to elicit opposing arguments to be rebutted. Recognizing that proportional representation is the core issue in these cases, Justice Kavanaugh may have just wanted to hear how counsel dealt with the issue before voting against the plaintiffs. Let us hope that was the case, and that all the effort devoted to securing his confirmation in the Senate will be vindicated by a vote that respects the elections clause, rather than yet again abusing the equal-protection clause to rewrite the Constitution from the bench.”
I have a college level (old school) reading level, but I’m having a hard time getting the gist of this blurb. Any FReepers able to break this down to non-doublespeak?
So if a state with 10 seats goes 50% Dem, 40% Rep, and 10% third party, the third party gets a seat even though it did not win a single district or area.
Or, if Pennsylvania divides its 18 seats 10 for the Dems and 8 for the Reps, all 10 Dems and 8 Repscan be from Philadelphia and the rest of the state can go to hell with nobody representing the people of Erie or Scranton or Altoona.
And these people are seriously debating this nonsense?