. . . is redistricting, as in gerrymandering. It's been going on since the birth of the nation, but we now have consultants who specialize in it. So the party in power in each state gets to design their districts to capture all their voters that they possibly can. Then the Representative from that district is safe as safe can be in the next election, and the next 20 after that, of course. Compromise is no longer needed because the reps don't fear being kicked out of office for being reasonable.

I've thought for a long time that the only way to fix this is a constitutional amendment. But that's about as likely as my ever seeing 50 again.

I suppose someone will say this is a bad idea, but I'm curious to see why. Not that I think anyone who's against it will present an actual sensible argument.

Prove me wrong!

I think it is a fine idea!

Now how we going to get it through our legislative process?



There are a lot of little technical issues. Like if you make them
uniform size then low population density areas will get too many
representatives relative to high population density areas and if you
try to make it based on population density then the boundary net will become more complex. Also there will need to be a process of periodic adjustment to take into account population changes etc.



But it is an extremely interesting idea and could also be used to limit the size of government and save cost!

If we allow the boundaries to cross state lines and make the districts large enough to be the average state size then we could have only 50 representatives which could cut down on the bickering in the House a lot and save us a ton in staff and stationary cost.



It could make for some interesting districts like a combination of say Hawaii and Alaska, Vermont and New York etc. It would be great fun to make it so the districts are combined in such a way that there are as few clearly red districts and blue districts as possible.



I say propose this idea and tout it in the media and run for office!