Palli: Gerrymandering needs to change to make our government more representative

In grade school, we were told we live in a representative democracy. Examining the state of our political system during the past few months and listening to my fellow students’ gripes with the system, I asked myself: “Does our government actually represent the people as a whole?”

There are several understandable failings in an admittedly imperfect system — for example, the nonrepresentation in the House of Representatives. House members are meant to be most directly responsible and responsive to the public, being re-elected every two years. Yet the makeup of the House of Representatives did not change with the electorate this election cycle.

While the Democrats won more than 50 percent of the popular vote, the Republicans have almost 54 percent of the seats in the House. This phenomenon was also apparent in 2010, when Republicans won more than 55 percent of the vote but only 51 percent of the power.

There are many probable partial causes for this effect, but one comes to mind as easiest to identify: gerrymandering. This is best demonstrated at a state-by-state level. Within California, the Democrats received about 60.6 percent of the votes cast in House elections, but came away with 38 of 53 seats (71.7 percent). On the flip side, in Texas, Republicans won 57.4 percent of votes cast in House elections but control 24 of 36 seats (66.7 percent).

Clearly, both parties benefit greatly from gerrymandering in different states, which creates geographic and systemic barriers to proper representation.

One disturbing aspect of this is that state legislatures, often elected every two years (as is the case in the House), are able to extend their reach eight more years into the future via redistricting in years following U.S. Censuses. These representatives are meant to constitute a snapshot in the evolution of society and ideas. It is unconscionable that this snapshot, by luck of the year, is able to exert an undue influence on the future of the country (and each state).

Changing the practice of gerrymandering is critical to ensuring that every vote counts and every vote counts equally every year. In order to ensure fairness, redrawing of district lines must be taken out of the hands of state legislatures.

One option would be to send the job to the judiciary or to create “bipartisan” commissions, but these steps are likely to be quite futile: The problem would simply be pushed one step away from electoral accountability.

A better option would be to write a computer program to do it. The usual problems would arise. Who gets to decide the algorithm? How much do we trust the computer program?

But there are definite upsides. The lasting effect of census-year legislatures would be eliminated. In addition, it is likely that districts will be set up in such a way that the people will be better represented.

The harder question, though, is what would be the goal of a computer program for redistricting? Maximize districts with a majority of minority voters? Maximize geographic cohesiveness of each district?

I propose that the goal should be to create maximally cohesive contiguous districts with equal numbers of voters. In other words, the program should put people in the same neighborhood — and possibly in the same city — in the same district, while simultaneously ensuring that there are an equal number of voters in each district. Though the equality of each vote’s power will only last one election cycle, after which population movement will likely decimate the perfect equality, this is nonetheless a worthwhile goal. Additionally, keeping neighborhoods together and districts contiguous makes House members feel connected to a specific set of voters.

Though the ideal solution would be to fix redistricting as outlined above, Democrats like to hold California and Republicans like to hold Texas, so such reform is highly unlikely. In the absence of total reform, the oft-raised issue of party identification could help mitigate the deleterious effects of gerrymandering.

Currently, many people go to the ballot and cast “straight Republican” or “straight Democrat” votes. This ability, and even the identification on the ballot, defeats the purpose of having local elections. The purpose is for representatives to be in touch with voters and accurately reflect their concerns. I don’t oppose party affiliation, but at the polls, voters should be choosing between candidates, not parties. This applies even if they agree completely with a particular party.

For this reason, one way to attempt to create more equal representation is to eliminate party affiliation from ballots. This would in no way solve the problem; people can stand 10 feet away handing out flyers identifying the candidates from each party, but it will give a symbolic shift in the way that voting happens. Laudably, several states already operate under this policy, either not allowing straight party voting or disallowing party identification altogether. This policy should be adopted by all states.

Taken individually, or together, these changes can help to reduce the level of misrepresentation within our government.

Write Rohith at rohithpalli@gmail.com.