The Core Problem is Single-Seat Districts

I need to dig deeper into the Texas plan to attempt to squeeze five more Republican seats, but let me just note that I see a lot of pro-administration types currently discovering their distaste for the district maps in many states.

Here is an example of the genre.

Now, I am on the record as having a systematic critique of single-seat districts in the US. And I agree that it is highly problematic, from a democratic theory point of view, that Massachusetts, to pick the most egregious example from the above, has no Republican representation in the US House. While the state is heavily Democratic, there are more than enough Republicans in the state that, from a representativeness POV, it should probably have around three Republican Representatives.

It should be noted that some of those maps are blatant gerrymanders and others are not (California’s maps, for example, are drawn by a commission, and the main culprit for the lack of adequate representation is population patterns and the usage of single-seat districts).

I cannot stress enough: there is no such thing as truly fair maps that are also democratically competitive. For example, while the new maps in Alabama are fairer and more representative, they are mostly utterly uncompetitive. That is, the ratio of Rs to Ds (now 5:2 instead of 6:1) is better than it was and closer mirrors the state’s overall ratio of Rs to Ds, but almost all the seats are uncontested, or close thereto (see here for details).

Here’s the Vice President of the United States and Some Dude on Twitter.

I would note that it seems that a lot of pro-administration types have discovered that our electoral rules do not produce especially representative outcomes. This despite the fact that their favorite Chief Justice once referred to such concerns as “sociological gobbledygook.”*

Let me be clear: the solution to all of this is to elect the US House of Representatives in multi-member districts using some version of proportional representation.

More to come, no doubt.

BTW, I used the original gerrymandering political cartoon because it fits, but I would stress the issue is not primarily gerrymandering (although, yes, the Texas case is blatant partisan gerrymandering), but rather it is using single-seat districts full stop. Rank choice voting does not solve this problem, by the way, as long as it is used in single-seat districts.

More reading on this topic.

• It’s the Single-Seat Districts
• Single-Seat Districts are a Huge Problem
• The Lack of Competition for House Seats
• Speaking of Reform
• More on Alabama Districts

*Roberts was referring to efficiency gap analysis, but he was really underscoring that he doesn’t have more than a rudimentary understanding of electoral studies (to the point that he doesn’t understand the difference between sociology and political science).