Let's talk of gerrymandering

[ddstory]

"America is not a democracy, it's a republic". I've heard this adage way too often, and it has boggled me at times, admittedly. I mean, what's wrong with direct democracy?

Let's look at this.

Comments

[garote]

So, the electoral college is a systemic distortion that we're stuck with for as long as the states are rivals. It's representatives and districts, but at least it's without the possibility of Gerrymandering: State lines are nailed down quite thoroughly at this point, and electoral college allocations only change when the population shifts. And though it sucks having that distortion built in - those 4.8 million disenfranchised Californians who voted for Romney for example - at least the artificial zones created by state lines are actual zones, and that can be a good thing.

If we managed to build a system so efficient that 319 million people could vote directly for or against all federal legislation, with no representatives in the middle, there would still be the question of who authors the legislation, and what their motives are. As direct democracy scales up, differences in population density can create some really bad decisions. (Basic off-the-cuff example: Los Angeles versus the Owens Valley.) And with no representatives to appeal or complain to, or send to jail or kick out of office, the ability to undo bad decisions can be severely limited. It's too easy to attack direct democracy as "mob rule", when the apparent solution is to grow a better mob - but even a well-educated and thoughtful mob can be self-serving and stubborn...

(My other favorite example: Proposition 13 in California. A measure sold to the public as "protect Grandma from being kicked out of her house", which has resulted in HUGE imbalances in tax rates that mostly favor entrenched large landowners, as well as wild swings in state tax income level and a boom-bust cycle for all state financing. I loathe Prop 13. There are several ways to completely eliminate the unfairness it creates, without poor little old grandma losing her house, but entrenched land owners savagely oppose all of them.)