[bcatanzaro]

Could we reduce the power of gerrymandering by increasing the number of districts? At the first census, there were 3.9M people and 65 districts. Now we have 327M people and 435 districts, so the number of people per district has increased by 12.5X. I would think this makes gerrymandering more lucrative, since gerrymandering works because of quantization error.

[padobson]

Let's do a 100x - 43,500 districts. This would probably fix Citizens United too, it'd be really expensive to buy 43,500 congress members.

[slim]

why not 327M district? (direct democracy)

[padobson]

Mob rule is not what you want. It's terrifying.

What you want is a slow projection of the will of the people onto the seats of power. That's why separation of powers is so brilliant.

Judges are completely insulated from the people, unelected with lifetime appointments.

The President - when chosen by a real electoral college rather than the funky thing the EC has actually evolved into - is more answerable to the will of the people, but still insulated enough to do the job without the daily whims of the mob plunging the ship of state into chaos. It takes time and slow calculated movements to steer the ship of state. We want an executive who can make those calculations without constant fear of political turmoil.

The Senate, as it was originally designed, is closer to the people but also insulated. Senators get six years to advocate for the interests of their state. Before the 17th amendment, they were chosen by the state legislatures to directly represent the interests of the state as a whole.

And the House is directly answerable to the people, with each member representing a portion of them - 700k or 70k or 7k. It's the most powerful part of the government and also the most distributed. It's the beating heart of democracy and the starting point for all discussion on what constitutes the rights of the citizens, as directed by the citizens. But it is just a starting point. How the will of the people filters its way into the senate and the executive and the judicial branch is the refining process of a representative republic, the best form of government yet implemented by humans.