A Centrist’s Platform — Moving Away From Purely Geography-Based Representation

(This is one of a weekly series of posts entitled “A Centrist’s Platform”. The complete collection of Centrist’s Platform posts is available on a single page, or via a special RSS feed.)

(Note: parts of this post are taken from a post I made last summer.)

Last week, I mentioned that in a winner-take-all, one-representative-per-district system, ending gerrymandering and moving towards a politics-blind method of drawing district boundaries would ease my concerns of two-party duopolistic power, with politicians beholden to themselves more than the citizenry they are supposed to serve.

There are two problems with the scheme I described however: 

First, to the extent that geographic constituencies need to be defined in order to improve the odds of particular groups of interest being represented, a politics-blind redistricting plan would likely erode those groups’ potential influence.

Second, it does nothing to my theory that two-party rule is an artifact of how we determine political representation.

In this day and age, I have to wonder whether it still makes sense for legislative representation to be based solely on geography.   As more of us forge connections that aren’t necessarily constrained by geography, you have to wonder if geography is the best basis to allocate political power.

For example, even though I live in northern Connecticut, I’m at least as interested in the affairs of folks in Boston and New York (the two cities I telecommute to), in southern Alabama (due to family ties), or in assorted other jurisdictions around the country (due to the nature of my work).

However, many of my political concerns — potential government involvement in catastrophe insurance on the coasts, bolstering the changing economy in Alabama’s Wiregrass region, or traffic/transportation related issues around Boston and New York — probably won’t rank terribly high on a list of priorities for my Connecticut-based Congressman.

So why must we be limited to the idea that we can vote for one candidate who happens to reside in the same general geographic region as we do?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we live in a jurisdiction represented by 10 legislators, 10,000 voters, two major parties (”D” and “R”) and two minor parties (”G” and “L”).  Today, that legislature would likely take its members from 10 districts (A-J), where election results could look something like this:

 

Candidates R-A, R-B, D-C, R-D, R-E, D-F, D-G, R-H, D-I, and D-J are elected, giving us a legislature made up of 5 R’s and 5 D’s.   In aggregate, the legislature would look sort-of-kind-of like the political leanings of the entire jurisdiction (if the L’s are assumed to be like R’s, and the G’s are assumed to be like D’s), but it does have the unfortunate side effect of many voters potentially being unserved by the representative from their district.   Minor parties are completely unrepresented in the legislature.

If I could wave a magic wand, I’d be very tempted to revise the world so that in this example jurisdiction, we’d maintain 10 legislators, but have only half as many geography-based districts.  Voters could still vote for only one candidate, but candidates may run in multiple districts.   The ten legislators would be made up of the top vote-getter in every jurisdiction, plus the top five vote-getters who weren’t otherwise elected.  (And, in the event of retirement/etc., the replacement would come from the next-highest vote-getter, etc.)

So, my example jurisdiction described above, might end up looking like this: