By Bill Shein
June 7, 2011

There’s something odd on the Web site of the Massachusetts Legislature’s Special Joint Committee on Redistricting, which will hold a public hearing this Saturday in Pittsfield. The description of the event says, in part, “The Committee will solicit testimony on the division of the Commonwealth into: (a) Nine Congressional districts under the United States Constitution.”

What’s odd is that the Constitution says nothing about how many districts Massachusetts should have after a census. Of course, given all the political chatter about which current House member may find his or her district eliminated, it’s understandable that nearly everyone believes we must have nine Congressional districts.

Members of the committee, however, certainly know otherwise. The Constitution simply apportions to Massachusetts nine members of the federal House of Representatives – and that doesn’t require nine districts.

Why is this important? Because lost in the usual redistricting nonsense is a broader debate about the inadequate, outmoded, and generally poor representation provided by what are called “single-member, winner-take-all” districts.

Win a slim majority of votes – or just a plurality in a field of three or more candidates – and you get 100 percent of the representation. Those who didn’t vote for the winner – sometimes a significant majority in a large field of candidates – are left without a voice at the legislative table. That’s “representative” democracy?

Take, for example, voters in the first Congressional district who don’t care for the views of Rep. John Olver. That would likely include most conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, and those progressive Democrats who see Olver as a creature of the narrow status quo in Washington. Indeed, he raises hundreds of thousands of dollars from business- and military-related PACs, a sure sign that he won’t rock the boat very much – especially when that boat is a locally produced warship.

So, if you don’t agree with John Olver, who represents your views in Congress? No one. To have someone from western Massachusetts advocate for your point of view, the only option is to defeat Olver – a requirement that creates bitter, largely unproductive political divisiveness.

There are, however, some alternatives. One option is for Massachusetts to create multi-member “super districts.” For example, Massachusetts could draw three large Congressional districts instead of nine smaller ones. In each district, we’d elect three representatives – a total of nine members of Congress, as apportioned under law.

(Note that Massachusetts, like many other states, formerly used multi-member districts in its legislature.)

A variety of voting systems could be used, e.g. cumulative voting, in which every voter has three votes to allocate as desired, and the result would be that far more of us would have an actual representative in Washington. In the western Massachusetts super-district, we might elect two Democrats and one Republican. Or perhaps a Green-Rainbow candidate, a Republican, and a Democrat – combinations that reflect our diversity of views.

Now, that may sound dangerously like representative democracy – which is why it’s not on the legislature’s agenda. The goal of partisan redistricting in Massachusetts and elsewhere has little to do with fair representation and everything to do with preserving entrenched power.

Of course, representative governance depends on many things; the electoral system is just one factor. And there are legitimate questions about whether multi-member districts would properly protect the voting rights of racial minorities, especially given Massachusetts’ history of diluting the influence of these voters. (Such districts might, in fact, enhance their representation.)

But it’s remarkable that in the midst of nationwide redistricting, Americans remain largely unaware of better options. Few of our outdated political structures – most notably our winner-take-all legislative districts and the convoluted, undemocratic Electoral College system – are used in other modern democracies. Why? Because they don’t provide full, equal, and effective representation.

In the 1780s, the system created by the Founders was groundbreaking in many ways, to be sure. But today, there are much-improved alternatives.

Defenders of the status quo often suggest that the current electoral system ensures “stability.” Which is another way to say that it makes substantial change slow and difficult. For those who benefit most under the current state of affairs, slowing or preventing change is quite desirable. For everyone else? Um, not so much.

Among voters who believe big change is required to address our escalating economic and environmental crises, reforming outdated democratic structures must become a top priority. Even if this year’s partisan redistricting in Massachusetts will be more of the same, it could spark an urgent discussion of future improvements to our not-so-representative democracy.

(UPDATE: As Steve Chessin righty notes in the comments, there is a federal law that currently prevents legislatures from pursuing these ideas for better representation in Congress. That law should be repealed, of course.)

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Bill Shein eats broken electoral systems for breakfast.

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