Video script
Do you know gerrymandering is actually really easy to fix? Theoretically, you can make it disappear, like, over night, and permanently.
But of course, a reform like that will almost never happen. It’s like a paradox. To pass a big reform, you need the consensus from the current electoral winners. But why would the winners want to change the system that makes them winners? Right? So political reforms are always a pain in the ass. Any significant reform requires a large number of people, millions of them, who understand how a new system would work and create a culture for it to happen.
That’s why I want to show you that there are systems out there where gerrymandering is simply impossible.
The system American voters are familiar with is called the FPTP system. Each district elects one House member exactly. So each district is supposed to have roughly the same amount of people.
So, what happens if the population changes and some districts become way more populous than others? Well, someone will need to redraw the district lines. And there are an infinite number of ways to redraw those lines, you can do this, or this, or this, or this.
So whoever controls that process will have a field day. They’re like a kid with a crayon, and they can just gerrymander to their hearts’ content.
That’s why there’s a saying that “voters don’t pick politicians, but politicians pick voters.”
But what if I tell you there’s a way to make redistricting obsolete?
There is something that’s widely used all over the world, especially in Europe and Latin America, which is called the proportional representation system. Instead of electing one representative per district, they elect multiple per district. And parties divide up these multiple seats based on the percentage of the votes they receive.
These countries almost never have to redraw their districts. Can you see why? If a district gets more population over time, all you need to do is give one more seat to that district. If their population drops significantly, all you need to do is take a seat away. You always use the same district boundaries regardless of the population change, but only adjust the number of seats in each district. And that number is based on population, so there is nothing you can manipulate unless you miscount the population on purpose, but that’s a different story.
If you’re one of those math geeks, you probably will ask me, “How do you divide these seats proportionally? What if the number you deserve is not a whole number?” Let’s say my district has 7 seats, and my party got 20% of the votes. 7 X 20% = 1.4. But how can a party get 1.4 seats, right? You either get one or two. You can’t cut a seat in half, right?
That’s true. Even in a proportional representation system, you can never make the votes and seats completely proportional. The proportionality is always approximate. There are many ways to do the approximation, but I don’t want to bore you with the mathematical details. I’ll just give you the simplest version. It’s not the most common version, but it’s the most simple one. It’s called the largest-remainder method.
Let’s say we have 7 seats. The 1st party got 50% of the votes, which deserves 3.5 seats. The 2nd party got 25%, which deserves 1.75 seats. The third party gets 20%, which deserves 1.4 seats. The fourth party receives 5%, which deserves 0.35 seats.
OK, now we first give out seats based on the integer part.
1st party gets 3 seats, 2nd and 3rd party each gets 1 seat. The 4th party gets 0. That means we have given out 5 seats. But there’re 7 in total, remember? So what to do with the remaining 2 seats?
Well, we look at the fraction part. .5, .75, .4, and .35. So these two parties have the largest decimal parts. What do we do? We give the remaining two seats to these two parties. So the final seat distribution is 4, 2, 1, 0. OK? It’s not entirely proportional, but pretty decent.
So the bottom line is that under a proportional representation system, each district doesn’t have to be equal because they have different numbers of seats. So there is no reason to keep redrawing district lines, which makes gerrymandering virtually impossible.
But of course, there are so many other benefits of proportional representation. I can talk about it for hours. Drop a comment if you want me to continue on this topic.
I’m such a big fan of proportional representation that I don’t even think other systems need to exist. Of course, presidential elections cannot use proportional representation because there’s only one president. That’s why I don’t think there should be a President at all. I think every country should have a parliamentary system where a collective body controls the executives. Why do we need one person to be above everyone else? Doesn’t make sense.
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