[EM] [CES #3965] Re: Proportional, Accountable, Local (PAL) representation: isn't this a big deal?

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/10/26 Jim Riley <jimrtex at pipeline.com>

> I think that is an unrealistic interpretation of current law in the United
> States.
>

Thanks a lot for your legal analysis; you clearly know a lot more about this
than I. I won't address your (very interesting) case-by-case discussion, but
I will respond to your point about the politics of this:


> But let's imagine that you convinced a State that Congress left a
> loophole.  You would likely then have a legislature where the party that is
> advantaged by district elections, is also advantaged in legislative
> elections.  So you go to Maryland or Illinois and tell the legislature that
> if they adopted this new system, that more Republicans would be elected to
> Congress.


Very good point. A state legislature which performs a partisan gerrymander,
will not want to undermine all that hard work by adopting FMV or PAL...


> That their good friends who they had just contributed the maximum amount
> to, might lose his seat, and all their efforts at gerrymandering were for
> naught.   And in particular, you tell them that it is the white Democrats
> from swingy districts that will lose their seats.  If they were honest, they
> would tell you it was not to their partisan advantage.  But they could
> simply say that it doesn't appear to be legal and thank you for your time.


 ...and thus they will tend to (or pretend to) interpret any gray area of
the law against the new system.

This is a pretty solid argument that FMV will not pass until the 1967 law is
overturned.

It is not an argument that the law will be impossible to overturn.
Undermining partisan gerrymanders on a state-by-state level will tend to
balance out more on a national level. And counting all the states with under
3 reps plus all the states with reasonably non-partisan redistricting rules
(AK, AZ, CO, CA, HI, ID, IA, MO, MT, NJ, PA, WA), you can reach a majority
of the House; so gerrymandered representatives don't have veto power over an
overturn.

Once the law is overturned, the fight will move to the states. There, it
will be a tough fight, but there are two ways to overcome the
pro-gerrymander bias Jim described. First, voter initiatives (in states
which allow them); and second, states where partisan control has switched
since the last redistricting.

Jameson
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