Sick of gerrymandering? It's not too late to change how America votes. |
Sick of gerrymandering? It’s not too late to change how America votes.
Some problems, like homelessness, are complex and seemingly intractable. But the current crisis sparked by the effective collapse of the Voting Rights Act and political gerrymandering isn’t like that. There’s a simple fix — literally one line — that will eliminate both of these problems and give us a functional Congress, fit for the 21st century.
That fix is eliminating congressional districts altogether and requiring states to elect all their House members at large. And every voter will vote for just one candidate.
Although it is illegal now, at-large voting has been used in American congressional elections since 1789. Some states elected House members this way into the 1960s. But in previous incarnations, voters chose as many candidates as there were seats available. So if your state were entitled to eight House members, you would vote for eight candidates. This allowed a small majority to shut out everyone else, and often resulted in a one-party congressional delegation that didn’t reflect the state’s political makeup.
In an effort to make congressional politics more responsive and competitive, Congress explicitly banned at-large voting in 1967. Voting by individual congressional districts was supposed to ensure that House members represented ordinary voters rather than political machines. Sixty years later, though, individual congressional districts are the problem rather than the solution.
At large, one vote (ALOV) would fundamentally reform congressional politics in ways both wonderful and awful, depending on your point of view. In Senate races, of course, this would have no impact at all. Nor would it have much impact in House races in smaller states. Iowa, for........