Subject: Re: Congressional districts are flawed
Unfortunately, looking at the matter from the perspective of how deliberative bodies work…… you’d end up with a ponderous mob, not anything resembling a group of men and women who could weigh and intelligently decide complex issues.

In the really really olden days of democracy, the citizens of Athens would line up, listen to (or participate in) the debate on an issue, and then drop colored stones into a vase. Dump the vase, count the stones, issue decided. No bother with “representatives’, every citizen had a vote. That’s true Democracy.

Of course there were tons of people who didn’t have a vote: slaves, women, those not yet citizens, and so on, so it wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t perfect? It was downright terrible if you were among the disenfranchised.

With the internet today it would be possible to return to “pure democracy”. With verified status (only those who can successfully identify all the squares with a bicycle), you could let every citizen vote on every issue. What fun that would be!

But pretty much that’s why we don’t have “democracy”, but “representative democracy”. In making that step change, you automatically guarantee that some voices will not be heard or will be pushed to the edge of irrelevance. It’s worse now than at other times, but it’s never been perfect.

I lived for a time in Massachusetts. You mostly did not want to be a Republican there, although they did elect some Republican governors. I also lived (very early life) in California. Again, not a great place for Republicans these days.

Now I live in Tennessee, where Republicans have both Senate seats, most Reps, the Governorship, and most judges. I keep my head down but still work for the opposition, even though it comes to nothing.

I think it would be better with a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting redistricting except after each 10 year Census, and then done by an independent citizens council which would (somehow) be protected from political dominance. I would also like to see some sort of mathematical or algorithmic way of doing so to take the “human emotion” out of it as entirely as might be feasible. (Tough putt, that, but I think it could be achieved.)