On Aug 27, 2004, at 6:54 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:17:59 -0400 James Green-Armytage wrote:
Dear Ernie,
My personal opinion is that bicameralism is unnecessarily bulky for a
state legislature. So rather than re-conceptualizing the relationship
between the two chambers, I'd rather just condense it into a single
chamber. I think that people have enough trouble keeping track of what is
happening in state government as it is, and I think that having two
separate chambers makes this problem twice as bad.
I like bicameral - and 49 of 50 states seem to agree. Does our one odd state feel they are better or worse?
My justification for bicameral is that there should be one geographical-representation body and one ideological-representation body. That is, one districted and one at-large proportional representation.
I think there's still value in having a local district representative who is more likely to be available to _you_, the local constituent.
For a representative to CA state legislature, say 1 rep per 50,000 people for districted and 1 per 500,000 for PR. With 30,000,000 people that makes one body of 60 and one of 600. Both "manageable" sizes.
As to gerrymandering:
Computer Science being the favorite hammer in my tool box, I feel like there ought to be a nice simple geometric rule that could be programmed up and you plug in the census data and out pops unbiased districts. (Alternately, and actively put into practice in some states (TX), given the voter registration databases with party information, out pops party-optimized districts.)
Hey, what if representation was based not on census but based on registered voters. That be some incentive to register, eh?
What if it went a step further and was based on voter turn out? (That could only be workable for PR, districts have to be worked out in advance.) What if PR was such that any 200,000 votes elected a candidate? That number would have to be tuned based on expected turn out, and desired size of legislative body.
Brian Olson http://bolson.org/
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