Gerrymandering is a problem the founding fathers didn’t foresee when they met in Philadelphia in 1787. They didn’t foresee the problem of how to draw congressional district lines because it was never their intent to cut up the states into artificial districts. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen by the, “People of the several States.” In setting the residency requirement for members the House, the Constitution
simple says that a member be an Inhabitant of the State. Nothing in Article 1 of the Constitution, which created the legislative branch, says anything about congressional districts.
The solution to the problem of gerrymandering is simple, don’t divide the states up into artificial districts which basically rig elections to favor one party over another. If a member of congress is supposed to represent the people of an entire state shouldn’t the people of the entire state have a vote in their selection?
Instead of trying to solve the problem of how to fairly draw district lines by drawing the lines differently, erase the lines and elect the entire house congressional delegation, at-large. Each voter would have one vote and the candidates with the most votes, equal to the number of representatives allotted to the state, would become the members of the House of Representatives from the state. This method would also give minority parties a better chance of having representation in Congress.
Bob Haran,
Arizona.
A counter-argument I have heard to this approach is that voters should be able to select a representative who represents their specific interests. For example, a farming area of the state might have different interests from an urban area or from an area along the coastline, and voters might want someone in Congress who is fighting for them.
Obviously, the way districts are currently drawn leads to partisan gerrymandering, which subverts the democratic process.
A possible compromise is to have super-districts. These are districts that represent a broader swath of each state and have multiple representatives, yet still retain at least a semblance of regional differentiation. This site has a section that describes it in more detail.
The problem with super districts is that you still have to draw an artificial district line somewhere and therefore you might have less gerrymandering but you still have gerrymandering. Maybe we can define drawing an artificial district line and gerrymandering as the same thing.
An open ballot, with each voter voting for one candidate, would allow the voter to vote for a candidate that represents their interest, be it ideology, economic, or common ancestry.