Feb. 14, 2022
Lee Drutman wrote about how proportional representation would solve gerrymandering for Time magazine.
By now, you’ve probably heard that Congress will once again be up for grabs this November. And chances are, you will feel like a helpless bystander, because chances are you don’t live in a district or state with an election competitive enough to matter.
If you are like roughly 90 percent of Americans, the congressional district where you live is already in the bag, safely tied up for the Ds or the Rs. Even if you are one of the “lucky” ones in a rare competitive district, you might not feel so lucky by Election Day. Prepare to be deluged with endless internet and television advertisements, flyers, and door-knocking volunteers from out of state. Get ready for bitter fights with neighbors over lawn signs. And settle in for when your new freshman representative gets voted out in another election cycle or two when the political winds shift slightly, once again.
There has to be a better way to hold elections. There is. We can move to a system of proportional representation, ensuring that every vote counts equally, and every voter matters.
It’s easy to blame gerrymandering, trotting out the old line about politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around. But much as we like to blame gerrymandering, that’s not the core problem. The core problem is more basic: when House districts only have one representative, but Democrats and Republicans live in different places, most districts will be naturally lopsided. And partisan fairness will depend on where voters happen to live. When Democrats live overwhelmingly in the cities and Republicans overwhelmingly live in the exurbs, the only competitive districts tend to be those at the boundaries, where the “density divide” goes from blue to red.