Multi-Member Congressional Districts
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  Presidential Elections - Analysis and Discussion
  Presidential Election Process (Moderator: muon2)
  Multi-Member Congressional Districts
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Author Topic: Multi-Member Congressional Districts  (Read 35463 times)
Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« on: July 01, 2014, 11:58:39 AM »

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I had an idea a while back for how we might fix (or at least ameliorate) the gerrymandering issue, and I figured this was as good a place as any to hash it out.

The idea is this: states would split up into multi-member districts consisting of 3-5 representatives per district, at the discretion of the state, and with certain requirements that the districts be demographically self-similar to the state at large (within some bounds, of course).

Obviously states with 5 or fewer representatives are easy: the entire state is one multi-member district. With 6 representatives, the state must split up into two three-member districts. With seven representatives, one three-member and one four-member district. With eight representatives it'd start to get interesting, as the state could opt to split into two four-member districts or a three-member and a five-member district.

For instance, Illinois, with 20 votes, would have the following possibilities:

3-3-3-3-3-5
3-3-3-3-4-4
3-3-4-5-5
3-4-4-4-5
4-4-4-4-4
5-5-5-5

Maybe a Single Transferable Vote, or some other voting system. I'd be open to hearing about others, though I had envisioned as STV.

The advantage of making sure that the districts are roughly demographically self-similar to the state is that once you carve one out, the remainder of the state should still be demographically self-similar to the state as well, meaning the process could likely hum along almost automatically.

Thoughts?
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #1 on: July 01, 2014, 12:04:44 PM »

Forgive my newness, I just realized this would probably be better suited to be in the Political Geography and Demographics subforum.
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muon2
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« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2014, 04:24:50 PM »

I think the thread is fine here, and it's interesting that you picked IL as an example. Up through 1980 IL had multimember districts for the state House. The elections involved modified cumulative voting. Each voter had three votes and could cast them for three candidates with 1 vote each, two candidates with 1.5 votes each, or one candidate with 3 votes.
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SteveRogers
duncan298
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« Reply #3 on: July 02, 2014, 01:06:04 AM »

I could get behind this, although I think it would be harder than you think to craft laws governing how to make the districts "demographically similar". Still, large multi-member districts would go a long way towards alleviating the problems of gerrymandering.

As for the voting system, I think STV would definitely suit American politics better than a party-list PR system.
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2014, 06:40:19 AM »

I think the thread is fine here, and it's interesting that you picked IL as an example. Up through 1980 IL had multimember districts for the state House. The elections involved modified cumulative voting. Each voter had three votes and could cast them for three candidates with 1 vote each, two candidates with 1.5 votes each, or one candidate with 3 votes.
That's interesting! I just picked Illinois because it was large enough to have an interesting number of possible permutations, but small enough that it was easy for me to figure out on the fly.

I could get behind this, although I think it would be harder than you think to craft laws governing how to make the districts "demographically similar". Still, large multi-member districts would go a long way towards alleviating the problems of gerrymandering.

As for the voting system, I think STV would definitely suit American politics better than a party-list PR system.
The part about the districts being demographically similar is the most hand-wavy part of the plan, to be sure. But my thought was that mandating multi-member districts would eliminate some of the problems of gerrymandering, but allowing them to be of varying size eliminates (or ameliorates) the problem of possibly splitting up communities of interest; limiting the districts to 5 members at maximum is arbitrary, but I figured that after some point multi-member districts with too many members might start to get unwieldy. Mandating that they be 3-5 members would still keep a decent bit of local flavor, I think.

Of course, I think this could probably work a decent bit better if the size of the House weren't set statutorily at 435, but that's another topic. Actually, out of curiosity I once ran a little simulation on the House using the rule (proposed by a friend of mine) that in a redistricting, no state which gains population should lose representation. Using the same apportionment method currently used, going back to the beginning of the country, such a rule would imply a current House of Representatives with something over 3,000 members. Not the 10,000+ potentially allowed by the Constitution, but still a good bit more.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2014, 07:23:43 PM »
« Edited: September 26, 2014, 07:34:08 PM by Kevinstat »

I thought once about doing (in the Political Geography & Demographics board) a Trond-style redistricting thread, from 1930 on like his Kingdom Cum thread (or maybe from 1910 on as there have been 435 House seats since then except for new members for Alaska and Hawaii when they first became states) called "Color me Green: Irish Green"* (perhaps with "Multi-Member Congressional Districts" in the subject heading) based on this exact premise, but never got around to it.  Kudos to you, Figs, for finally mentioning this idea on the forum!

*The Republic of Ireland uses Single Transferable Vote for lower (and principal) house, the Dáil Éireann, with multi-member districts of, you guessed it, 3 to 5 members.  A couple years ago, I started a big Excel table of all the possibilities of the numbers of 3-seaters, 4-seaters and 5-seaters which eventually covered (a) total state congressional allotments from 3-60, (b) any of the possible sizes of the Dáil going into both the last Constituency Commission with a reduced Dáil size (153-160 TDs), and (c) for the 166 TDs the Dáil Éireann has had since the first Constituency Commission and the 1981 election (until this most recent Constituency Commission, the boundaries drawn by which will first be used in the next general election, probably next year).  It has over 2800 rows.  Another sheet in that workbook went from 5-7 and 10-20 total members with the 5-7 member/district range that Northern Ireland uses for its multi-member districts in local government elections (the rules would have to be adjusted in this case for 8 or 9 members, as well as less than 5), plus the 40, 41 and 60 members elected to various councils under the new 11-council model.  I'm a geek, I know.
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2014, 09:44:01 AM »

Very interesting. I had no idea that this system was already in practice somewhere.
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Vega
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« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2014, 08:12:03 PM »

Fairvote has got you covered with, in my opinion, an excellent map.

http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/congressional-elections/monopoly-politics-2014-and-the-fair-voting-solution/
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Oldiesfreak1854
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« Reply #8 on: December 08, 2014, 07:26:51 PM »


For instance, Illinois, with 20 votes, would have the following possibilities
Illinois has only 18 districts.
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Vega
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #9 on: December 08, 2014, 08:00:28 PM »


For instance, Illinois, with 20 votes, would have the following possibilities
Illinois has only 18 districts.

Odd think to bump a thread over.
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #10 on: December 08, 2014, 08:05:29 PM »

Strange oversight on my part. I may have seen 18 and added two as though we were talking about EVs. The math still stands though.
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muon2
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« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2014, 04:59:06 AM »

One part of your plan that would be difficult is the goal of creating districts that are self-similar to the state. In IL there is a sharp difference between Chicago, its suburbs, and Downstate. To create self-similar districts would entail a number of pie slices out of Chicago. If there were 6 such slices (3 reps each) they would look pretty ugly, and it's likely they would violate the VRA by cracking the minority populations. To guarantee that the blacks and Latinos could each elect the candidates of their choice they would have to be concentrated in certain districts, which would skew the other districts.
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2014, 10:20:08 AM »

Yeah, that's the sketchiest and least thought-out part of it, to be sure. But my vague notion was that something like an STV system would change the dynamics of what it would take to achieve minority representation in accordance with the VRA.
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muon2
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« Reply #13 on: December 18, 2014, 09:43:55 AM »

Yeah, that's the sketchiest and least thought-out part of it, to be sure. But my vague notion was that something like an STV system would change the dynamics of what it would take to achieve minority representation in accordance with the VRA.

I don't think that STV works here. Consider that the black population is about 15% of IL, and they are sufficiently concentrated to get 3 of 18 seats when the state is gerrymandered, and certainly should have the opportunity to elect at least 2 of 18 reps. Cook plus a couple of adjacent counties is 9 reps (eg. Lake and Kane) and it would be easy to divide that into three districts of three reps each with one at 51% BVAP and one at 36% HVAP. Then an STV could work in those districts, but a district with 3 reps and 15% BVAP would be unlikely to elect a minority candidate of choice with STV.
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Slander and/or Libel
Figs
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« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2014, 10:01:50 AM »

Like I said, the self-similarity is the sketchiest part of my idea, and the one I'm least wedded to (and least sure what I really meant by it entirely, to be honest).
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