NationStates Jolt Archive

Here in Texas, we have a redistricting map that is being challenged by the Supreme Court as "unconstitutional." I think that redistricting, no matter who does it, could be described as "the work of the devil." Honestly, it's like letting the fox guard the henhouse. What I want to know is, what should be done about it? How do other countries handle the problem of districts (I know some countries do porportional, but others, including most Commonwealth countries, do "first-past-the-post" with districts.)

The problem I have with the porportional system is it seems very impersonal, with little accountability to individual politicians.

If this is about circumscriptions, not administrative divisions (my country makes a clear distinction), then:

We have them established by Parliament through organic law. They are supposed to have a certain population (or around that number), and cannot surpass the borders of an administrative division (a county). The counties were created by a different organic law, and their borders can only be changed with extreme difficulty.

Mind you, Romania is a centralised country, which means that the single power of the central government does not have to deal with significant local identities, and is the equivalent of both Washington D.C. and Austin.

NOTE: the circumscription sends more than one representative to the Parliament. We also have party lists.


EDIT:That being said, I see no problem with proportionality. First-past-the-post sucks.

If I could snap my fingers and apportion districts, I'd use whatever demographic information I could to ensure every district was as competitive as possible--no "safe" seats. Of course, I'd also quadruple the size of the current House of Representatives in order to try to give smaller parties a shot at winning seats and thereby growing their constituencies.

i live in a town of 11,000 and its divided between two congressional districts and i don't think it even has a political signifigance locally, but someone on the state level just didn't give a crap that its really annoying to live in a small town that doesn't even have the political advantage of being able to call one congress person their own... then again maybe having two is actually an advantage when it comes to trying to squeeze scraps from the pork banquet that is washington, i'm not really sure.

Congressional seats are proportional. Each Congressman gets a little over 500,000 people. The problem is who are those people? Do you want all rich, all poor, all black, all white, all HS dropouts, all college grads,........? These types of districts have been made from the beginning. The problem in Texas is the constitution doesn't say how many times or when the districts are made. It says that a census it to be made every 10 years to set the size of the districts. The assumption has always been that the districts are then changed every 10 years. But Texas decided to change when the Reps took over the state government, after the 10 year census change. If this is allowed then some states could change every two years as their state government changes back and forth between Dem and Rep. This could cause chaos.

all states need to have a constitutional ammendment requiring rational district drawing that pays no attention to political leanings or racial/ethnic makeup of the areas. districts that dont split neighborhoods or cities except when its just not possible to do otherwise.

gerrymandering is the enemy of democracy.