This is an update to a post originally made in April 2017, triggered by my (then) recent read of a Quanta article How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering. Also influencing me since then was a book by Lawrence Lessig, They Don't Represent Us.
Of course, gerrymandering has been in the news in recent weeks. In fact, just yesterday, I noticed a network news story that showed some Texas Democrats living near Austin literally in tears about being shuffled to a new probable-GOP Congressional voting district.
One of those things you have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at.
Briefly: the problem is winner-take-all elections.
I came up with a simple solution back in 2017. The "crackpot" notion, which would require some Constitutional tinkering: Any candidate for the US House of Representatives who receives greater than 1% of the popular vote in the general election shall be entitled to a vote in the House equal to the fraction of the vote he or she receives. More details available at the articles linked above and below.
This is a variety of proportional representation, although (I think) different (and, ahem, better) than the schemes described in the relevant Wikipedia article.
The natural question: how would that have worked out in an actual election? Well, we don't know, and there's no way to tell, because the voting incentives would be totally different under this scheme. That won't stop us from speculating anyway. The MIT Election Data + Science Lab recently updated their data to include the 2024 elections, and I wrote a simple script to show the results for party breakdown, assuming this crackpot scheme was in place.
The results:
| Party | Representatives | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| REPUBLICAN | 426 | 213.28 |
| DEMOCRAT | 419 | 206.54 |
| DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR | 5 | 2.09 |
| LIBERTARIAN | 65 | 2.02 |
| INDEPENDENT | 30 | 1.65 |
| CONSERVATIVE | 22 | 0.99 |
| WORKING FAMILIES | 12 | 0.64 |
| CONSTITUTION | 8 | 0.50 |
| GREEN | 21 | 0.39 |
| NO POLITICAL PARTY | 2 | 0.37 |
| DEMOCRATIC-NONPARTISAN LEAGUE | 1 | 0.30 |
| REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN | 1 | 0.28 |
| WORKING CLASS | 8 | 0.22 |
| NO PARTY PREFERENCE | 1 | 0.22 |
| UNAFFILIATED | 4 | 0.11 |
| NO PARTY AFFILIATION | 4 | 0.10 |
| PACIFIC GREEN | 3 | 0.07 |
| INDEPENDENT AMERICAN | 2 | 0.06 |
| UNENROLLED INDEPENDENT | 1 | 0.05 |
| UNITED UTAH | 1 | 0.05 |
| APPROVAL VOTING PARTY | 3 | 0.04 |
| INDEPENDENCE | 1 | 0.04 |
| UNITY PARTY | 3 | 0.04 |
| STATEHOOD GREEN | 1 | 0.03 |
| NO PARTY | 2 | 0.03 |
| U.S. TAXPAYERS | 2 | 0.03 |
| PROGRESSIVE, INDEPENDENT | 1 | 0.03 |
| ALLIANCE | 1 | 0.03 |
| COMMON SENSE | 1 | 0.03 |
| LAROUCHE | 1 | 0.02 |
| CONSTITUTIONAL CONSERVATIVE | 1 | 0.02 |
| LABOUR | 1 | 0.02 |
| GREEN MOUNTAIN PEACE AND JUSTICE | 1 | 0.02 |
| TRUTH | 1 | 0.02 |
| UNITED CITIZENS | 1 | 0.02 |
| COMMON SENSE INDEPENDENT | 1 | 0.02 |
| NONPARTISAN | 1 | 0.01 |
| SOCIALIST WORKERS | 1 | 0.01 |
| AMERICAN CONSTITUTION | 1 | 0.01 |
The grand total: 1061 reps with a total of 430.39 votes.
I should add that the MIT data is pretty messy once you get away from the Rs and Ds, and I'm not confident that it reflects reality. In some states a single candidate can appear on the ballot for multiple parties. For example, AOC got 61.53% of the vote in her district (NY-14) as a Democrat, but she picked up another 7.39% under the "Working Families" party.
But in this fictitious scenario, the Republicans "win". Barely.
If you're interested: the results from 2022 and 2020; these posts also have additional comments on the scheme.
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