Steele on Electoral Reform - Part 8: Districts

Created: 27 March, 2012

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Updated: 13 October, 2022

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2 min read

Gerrymandering is outlawed. It will be replaced by any combination of compact computer drawn districts using open source software and/or citizen wisdom councils selected from jury duty pools, and/or at-large districts. All gerrymanders in progress in 2011 are stopped by this Act and replaced by tightly-drawn districts. In light of the 1:1 representation provided by national referendums, no increase in the number of Representatives is necessary.

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Gerrymandering is criminal insane and totally against the intent of the representational aspect of democracy. As one wag has put it, gerrymandering allows the Members of the House to choose their voters, rather than the other way around.

I confess to having been an inattentive citizen all these years--voting in every election but completely oblivious to the criminal neglect of the public interest by the two-party tyranny and the Congress (both the Senate and the House).

This initiative is part of a whole -- without all the others, especially National Ballot Initiatives that give every citizen a say on major proposed spending, and also campaign finance and ballot access, fixing this by itself does very little. That is the key point: we have to fix the whole thing all at once to create sustainable integrity.

The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track