As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress – at President Donald Trump’s request – residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.
The proposed map chops up Central Texas’ 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.
One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.
But it creates others. In the US we vote for people, in proportional representing, you vote for parties.
You can argue that’s better, but it’s very different from what we have now.
It is different, and I would indeed argue it’s better. And let’s face it, you are mostly voting for parties anyway. How many independents are there really?
But if you want to have district representatives, you could do a hybrid system where half the seats are assigned by district, and the other half are assigned from a national list to fill out the proportionality.
Republicans would be getting most of their seats from districts, Greens and Libertarians would get them entirely from the national list, but at least they’d get representation.
Just just copy the German 2 vote system.