I found these two passages in John Curiel’s RealClearPolitics post on gerrymandering particularly interesting:
Organizations such as Common Cause argue that the move to independent commissions would remove individuals with the most vested interests from the process, preventing them from putting their own personal and partisan goals ahead of community interests.
Research suggests that these independent commissions draw more competitive districts than those drawn by state legislatures. Leading constitutional law expert Richard Pildes makes a strong case that more competitive districts can, in turn, provide the incentives for representatives to take more moderate positions, thereby lessening polarization within Congress. Redistricting definitely has a role to play in potentially depolarizing the House, but the nationalization of American politics, the power of primaries, and single-member districts might lead to self-reinforcing of political polarization. Solving redistricting at this point might not be sufficient.
and
A possible national-level solution more amenable to Republicans might be to increase the size of the House, which has been capped at 435 members since 1913. Political scientists Francis Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer suggest that increasing the House at a ratio followed by other Western democracies – the cube-root rule – would lessen state legislatures’ ability to manipulate district boundaries. Such a change would increase the size of the House to over 544 members and would need only legislation, as opposed to a constitutional amendment, to implement. Republicans would presumably have no reason to go along with such legislation, however, if they did not see it as advantageous to them; and Democratic representatives might likewise not enjoy the loss of their individual power. With more representatives, the power of any single representative diminishes. Additionally, increased chamber size would increase the power of party leaders, which could further nationalize politics.
The two major political parties have done everything in their power to rig the system to benefit themselves. Both Democrats and Republicans have created grotesquely gerrymandered districts that serve to protect incumbents and concentrate support for the other party in particular districts. If you don’t believe that Democrats do that, may I introduce you to the Illinois 4th Congressional District?
IMO gerrymandering has in general been employed most effectively by Republicans. The other strategy that has been employed, particularly effectively by Democrats in 2020, has been to nationalize every election to the greatest degree possible.
While I definitely believe that increasing the size of the House is a necessity, I remain unconvinced that the “cube root rule” is as relevant for the U. S. as it is for Germany, France, and the UK. I think it’s backing a solution out of circumstances rather than tailoring a solution to fit circumstances. The UK’s population has increased hardly at all since 1960; France’s has increased about 20%; Germany’s 30%. The U. S. in contrast is almost twice as large as it was in 1960.
Whatever strategy is employed I believe that democracy in America today is a cruel hoax and enabling the political parties to keep doing what they’ve been doing more effectively will not change that. We need major reform and right now the most likely source for such reform is at the state level.
One must make a bunch of assumptions that redistricting commissions create more competitive commissions.
For example, that the parties won’t try to game the composition of the commission; for example, there have been accusations California’s commissions independent members were partisan activists who temporarily became independent. Or simply ensure the majority party has the final say in the redistricting commission, like in New York.
In the extremis, the solution is to get rid of line drawing all together. Each state conducts a statewide election for all its House seats using a proportional voting system like STV.
Surprisingly, the author and all other continues to ignore the real issue blocking enlargement of the House. It isn’t a partisan issue so much an issue of small states vs large states; especially if small states lose their weight in the Presidential electoral college. It won’t fly while Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Maine are pivotal to winning the Presidency.
A thought experiment suggesting that the size of districts is a significant factor in evaluating just how democratic a system is would be to imagine one representative elected for the entire country. How would that be distinguished from an autocracy? How about one representative for each state? That would be better but not a lot.
Extremely large and wildly gerrymandered districts are obviously not truly representative and are undemocratic.
I am just saying there’s a lot less resistance if a change is about making representatives less remote — and not have the side effect that certain states lose power relative to others. My suggestion before to make thing palatable is to enlarge the Senate by 50 members while enlarging the House by 50%.