Fair Majority Voting (or How to Eliminate Gerrymandering)

1. THE PROBLEM. Something is rotten in the electoral state of the United States. Mathematics is involved. Advances in computer technology—hardware and software— have permitted a great leap “forward” in the fine art of political gerrymandering—“the practice of dividing a geographical area into electoral districts, often of highly irregular shape, to give one political party an unfair advantage by diluting the opposition’s voting strength” (according to Black’s Law Dictionary). It is generally acknowledged that some four hundred of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are “safe,” and many claim that districting determines elections, not votes. Recent congressional elections (especially those of 2002 and 2004)— summarized in Table 1—show the shocking impact of gerrymandering. Incumbent candidates, in tailored districts, are almost certain of reelection (over 98% in 2002 and 2004, over 94% in 2006). If an election is deemed “competitive” when the spread in votes between the winner and the runner-up is 6% or less, then 5.5% of the elections were competitive in 2002, 2.3% in 2004 and 9.0% in 2006. Many candidates ran unopposed by a candidate from one of the two major parties in all three elections. In Michigan, the Democratic candidates together out-polled the Republican candidates by some 35,000 votes in 2002, yet elected only six representatives to the Republican’s nine. In the 2002 Maryland elections, Republican representatives needed an average of 376,455 votes to be elected, the Democratic representatives only 150,708. In the 2004 Connecticut elections, the Democratic candidates as a group out-polled the Republican candidates by over 156,000 votes; nevertheless, only two were elected to the Republican’s three. In all three elections Massachusetts elected only Democrats: in 2002 six of the ten were elected without Republican opposition, in 2004 five and in 2006 seven. Ohio elected eleven Republican and seven Democratic representatives in 2006, and yet the Democratic candidates received 211,347 more votes than did the