Can a US state do a statewide election where you vote for a party and it’s proportionally distributed so you can avoid gerrymandering?
5 seats available: 50.01% R, 49.99%D => 3R, 2D
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I think they could if they made a law that enacted that (AFAIK, can’t do it just because governor decrees it though, for example).
There are a few states with various degrees of ranked choice voting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States
No, not federally at least. There was an act passed in the 60’s called the Uniform Congressional District Act that requires US House of Representatives members to represent a single geographical district. Prior to that, I believe that certain states did elect representatives at large (meaning they represented the entire state, proportionally), but that was disallowed after that point. Each state must be divided into districts (which can, of course, be fought over and gerrymandered), and each Representative is the sole winner of their district.
The only exception to this is the states with a small enough population that they only get one congressperson – in that case, the whole state *is* the district. There are only 6 of those small population states – North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont, Delaware, and Alaska. Along with the territories and districts that send non-voting members like DC, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc.
In theory, it’s possible. The US Constitution does not mandate any specific districts or the like, it simply requires that there be a certain number of representatives per person in a given state, with a minimum of one representative if the state is too small to meet the minimum. (Right now, several states benefit from this effect, especially in the Midwest and Rockies where many states are sparsely populated.)
However, I imagine that many *state* constitutions would not permit this as they most likely DO refer to congressional districts, and thus require representation on the basis of location rather than across the entire state. People may also feel there is higher accountability when a large state’s 10, 15, 20 representatives actually have specific constituents to respond to, rather than the whole state.
No. There is a federal law preventing this (2 U.S. Code § 2c).
There’s nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from providing that representatives are chosen statewide. I’m not sure they could do it exactly the way you propose, but they could choose to have all of their representatives elected at large, meaning by everyone in the state, if not for this federal law.
Of course, doing it that way would be counterproductive to what you want to have happen, since probably the majority party would win all of the seats rather than only the seats corresponding to their total vote.
The reason I’m not sure that, if the particular federal law didn’t exist, the states could do what you suggested, is that the Constitution requires that the representatives be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”. One could make a pretty strong argument that, if the election is held at large, and the majority chose Democratic or Republican, that the minority party wasn’t actually chosen by the people. We don’t usually do proportional representation in this country, and we usually say that the majority rules, meaning the majority vote is what represents the will of the people. So if 51% of the people chose the Democratic slate in Nevada, if I were a Democrat I would argue that the will of the people is that the state be represented by Democrats. Basically, if you make the election statewide, it’s not obvious that it wouldn’t just end up the same way each individual district ends up, where the plurality winner gets all the votes.
For the local statehouse, yes, absolutely. A US state can do a statewide election for the statehouse where you vote for a party and it’s proportionally distributed so that you avoid gerrymandering. There are very few restrictions on a state’s right to organize its own voting system.
But it can’t do so federally not until federal law changes. [Title 2 U.S. Code, Chapter 1, §2c](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2022-title2/html/USCODE-2022-title2-chap1-sec2c.htm) preempts direct forms of proportional vote, by mandating that “Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established”, established by the way we’re all used to.
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If any method of proportional representation were tried, it would be challenged, legally. If it was found legal, it could only be found legal if it fully preserve the principle of local representation through the district system.
A very clever statesman might be able to devise a system where you choose representatives proportionally from district races based on statewide results, but then the courts would decide, and they might rule against it.
One could argue the following text from Article I section 2 of the U.S. Constitution bars members being chosen by a party.
>The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States
So the problem with proportional representation is that the party decides who the representatives will be. The vote just determines how many members, if any, they get to choose. We would either need clarification from the Supreme Court whether the manner of choosing has to be a direct vote for the members, or an amendment to the Constitution.
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There’s a lot of long responses but TLDR, there’s a lot of red tape around elected representatives (outside of the electoral college) being essentially required to represent a specific geographical area
Even senate seats that are assigned as a flat 2 per state have to have districts, despite your idea making the most sense for them
No. A representative represents their own district and nobody else, so they can’t pull in votes from elsewhere either.
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