We need to change the way that congressional districts are drawn so that they operate in an INDEPENDENT and POLITICALLY NEUTRAL manner, and can serve the American people, not the political parties who want to strengthen their power.
I propose the method used in Australia, in which districts are redrawn after the census by not one, but two separate committees. The proposed redistribution in a state is made by a Redistribution Committee, composed of: the Electoral Commissioner, the Australian Electoral Officer for the State concerned, the State Surveyor-General and the State Auditor-General... PUBLIC objections to the proposed redistribution are considered and a final determination is made by an augmented Electoral Commission, consisting of the state's redistribution committee, plus the two other members of the Australian Electoral Commission. The Australian Parliament CANNOT REJECT OR AMEND THIS DECISION.
There is a consensus among Australia's main political parties that the membership of the redistribution committees and augmented electoral commissions is appropriate and enables them to operate in an independent and politically neutral way.
Information on Australian Electoral Redistributions can be found here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/Overview.htm
Comments (5)
We must have public financing of campaigns...period!
I know you think you don't want to pay for it...but you already ARE!
Every blocked piece of legislation that is supported by the majority because some committee head is paid off or intimidated into inaction, every blocked investigation into pharmacuticals...YOU PAY AND PAY AND PAY!
You pay hundreds of times what you would to finance campaigns in A CORRUPTION SURCHARGE!
The applicable corollary of Murphy's Law is: Whatever can be abused, will be abused. Publicly funded campaigns will help remove the influence of paper people from elections. Gerrymandering will only be stopped when self interest is removed - i.e. Humans are removed - from the process that makes the decisions on electoral redistricting. A computer could be programmed to draw the lines based on distance only. But we still couldn't trust the corporations who hired the programmers or the programmers themselves. Remember Diebold. I trust politicians more than the corporations who own them. The first order of business is to remove the tyrannical control by those insidious paper people.
This might work! But I wish you had included a link so we could check it out for ourselves.
I'm surprised that this is not one of the major ideas. It seems to me that it is essential to have more competition for our representatives so that their is a possibility that they will listen to us rather than to their party.
Another option is to simply delegate districting decisions in general to the judicial branch, ideally via constitutional amendment; this allows states to pick their own methods for determining districts, but still adds a solid layer of insulation between the politicians and their population.
This really should have been in the constitution by default, but the founders can hardly be faulted for not predicting the current scope of gerrymandering.