An excellent piece! Feds establishing standards for districts will run into the current prevailing (at least publicly) right wing attitude that voting is a state right to be regulated only by states. The courts currently are on the side of the feds at the moment — but…. This is a 1776 standoff, once again. Only if there is a large silent middle ground can this polar division be resolved. Since the 1776 division also involves race, finding a large center among whites is going to be difficult since now whites vote against their own self interest just to preserve racial superiority.
Developing standards would be difficult — has been, and would be subject to the complaint that all regulations have — top down control rarely takes into account local nuance or aberration from the norm. Los of room for fighting and compromise, however.
An alternate is that all elections for statewide and federal offices should be statewide. Districts would lose their power, as would the state legislature to exercise control; but power would be returned to the people. State House and Senate majorities likely would be similar — depending entirely on voter turnout and the party presence in each state. Elections would likely be more expensive. And states are likely to become single party representative states. Demographic factors would have to be considered more often that every 10 years with a census.
I just wrote some comments about statewide districts in the comment thread associated with my original post. Rather than repeat that here, I’ll just suggest you look over there.
What I like about communities that are not overwhelmingly partisan is that a primary does not determine the election. And the election can be about ideas.
An excellent piece! Feds establishing standards for districts will run into the current prevailing (at least publicly) right wing attitude that voting is a state right to be regulated only by states. The courts currently are on the side of the feds at the moment — but…. This is a 1776 standoff, once again. Only if there is a large silent middle ground can this polar division be resolved. Since the 1776 division also involves race, finding a large center among whites is going to be difficult since now whites vote against their own self interest just to preserve racial superiority.
Developing standards would be difficult — has been, and would be subject to the complaint that all regulations have — top down control rarely takes into account local nuance or aberration from the norm. Los of room for fighting and compromise, however.
An alternate is that all elections for statewide and federal offices should be statewide. Districts would lose their power, as would the state legislature to exercise control; but power would be returned to the people. State House and Senate majorities likely would be similar — depending entirely on voter turnout and the party presence in each state. Elections would likely be more expensive. And states are likely to become single party representative states. Demographic factors would have to be considered more often that every 10 years with a census.
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Thanks.
I just wrote some comments about statewide districts in the comment thread associated with my original post. Rather than repeat that here, I’ll just suggest you look over there.
We need god ideas to avoid gerrymandering.
What I like about communities that are not overwhelmingly partisan is that a primary does not determine the election. And the election can be about ideas.