Do you have any idea what you're looking at? Is the top some exotic kelp on display at the Monterrey Aquarium? -- the bottom some ancient Roman footware with golden straps twisted and misshapen by centuries of encasement in the earth? Naw! The truth is actually even more bizzare.
THE PROBLEM
The top is a map of Maryland's 3rd Congressional District, the bottom is Tennessee's 7th. Both are for members of the US House of Representatives. The top is safely Democrat, the bottom safely Republican. Notice anything unusual about them? Well, if your answer has to do with their shape the buzzer just nixed your response! Because, you see, once upon a time Gerrymandering was unconstitutional, but given the fact that these districts exist and are viable, that's just no longer true! The only thing that seems to matters is that some sliver of land connects members of a district, one to another. Period.
I used to think that the rules for constructing districts were part of the Constitution, but I am wrong. Here's a response to that idea from the website "The U.S. Constitution Online".
"Congressional Districts divide almost every state in the United States into two or more chunks; each district should be roughly equal throughout the entire country. Each district elects one Representative to the House of Representatives. The number of districts in each state is determined by the decennial census, as mandated by the Constitution. But districts are not mentioned in the Constitution. The United States Code acknowledges districting, but leaves the "how's" to the states (gerrymandering, however, is unconstitutional [as seen in Davis v Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109 (1986), though, the intent of gerrymandering is difficult to prove])."
Hard to prove? Looking at these selected examples, NO DUH! Can you say, "Impossible to prove!"
And perhaps that is an essential part of what needs to be changed in order to restore the power of the Constitution to provide us with a less corruptable democratic governance structure.
MY SOLUTION
I would propose that an amendment be added to the United States Constitution that directs states to create the most compact and contiguous districts possible based on county populations. These districts should begin with the county in the Northwestern most corner of the state and move east, and then return to the northwestern remaining edge and repeat the process until such a distict was created. When a county's population is to be split between districts, that division of representation should likewise move in bands of land 25 miles deep (north to south) starting from the Northwestern most edge of the effected county and moving in an easterly direction sweeping the county from west to east until the appropriate number of constituents is attained based on the most recent census data. (I would the manipulation of this rule to include contiguous neighborhoods that did not extend beyond ONE additional mile. Period.
Again, we're talking about DEMOCRACY here. Not calculated political gamesmenship. Democracy is about every voice being equal, and in order to better serve this possibility under our present form of government, a more objective and random (i. e. FAIR) system of allocating representation seems like a must have component.
This is only one of my ideas for restoring the power of the Constitution and restraining the power of the political parties.
We cannot ignore that the system is broken. We sleep at our own peril....
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