There is a bumper sticker that reads, “If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.”
The current system of redrawing single-member congressional districts every 10 years is so unrepresentative that on average, less than a majority of the people are being represented. How can this be? Let’s use the example of a Democratic district that has 35% Democrats, 34% Republicans, 20% independents, 6% Greens, 5% Libertarians. At most, only 35% of the people in the district are represented, even though 50% might vote Democratic in order to avoid casting a “wasted” or “spoiler” vote.
Fair District Florida’s proposal to eliminate gerrymanders will not make the districts fairer. Even though Democrats are supporting so-called “fair districting,” a recent analysis done by Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen showed that compact, contiguous districts would actually hurt Democrats in relation to Republicans because of the way Democrats tend to be concentrated in the cities. To have truly fair districts that represent everyone we need to institute a form of Proportional Representation called Choice Voting.
To do this, you would have a larger, multi-member district that is dispassionately redrawn by a computer after every census. Voters would rank their choices on the ballot. The top vote getters are elected, and there are no wasted votes because the winners are on everyone’s list. Candidates who rank at the bottom are dropped and their votes are reassigned automatically. A bigger, multi-member district might have 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans, an independent, a Libertarian and a Green. Voters in this kind of district would have full representation. There would never be a redistricting fight. There would also be no spoiled or wasted votes, and, best of all, gerrymanders would become extinct.
To complete the picture, we should also use instant runoff voting for single member districts, ban paid lobbyists, and have publicly funded and regulated campaign financing. If we did all these things, fair voting would no longer be illegal.