What is the best size for a district?
Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 3:28 pm
What is the best size for a district?
Using my own observations of my hometown's council districts as a model, I believe Duverger's theory became law prior to our reaching the 50,000 number. The effects were already obvious as our district sizes reached 20,000 but became a hard law somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000.
Note: For those not familiar with Duverger's theory, there's already another thread which covered that well, perhaps too well. This thread isn't for debating his theory, although it might get mentioned here.
In looking at their own state legislatures, I believe that our founders were keenly aware that the disconnect between rep and people widens as each districts get bigger, and the reps were going to become even more dependent on campaign money from self interest groups. This was before we had any parties.
This topic was the convention's most heated debate. There were those that wanted to set the magic number at 40,000 while others thought that even 30,000 was too big. Even Washington, who rarely said anything during the entire convention, weighed in on this. He ended up supporting the 30,000 figure although he thought the districts should be even smaller.
Currently, I am of the opinion that our founding fathers had it right when they came up with the 30,000 number. I think we need to figure out how to return to this mark.
Furthermore, I think we need to look at all districts within all levels of government. Regardless of the size used for our US House districts, other level districts certainly can be made smaller. And can be used as models for others to study.
Using my own observations of my hometown's council districts as a model, I believe Duverger's theory became law prior to our reaching the 50,000 number. The effects were already obvious as our district sizes reached 20,000 but became a hard law somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000.
Note: For those not familiar with Duverger's theory, there's already another thread which covered that well, perhaps too well. This thread isn't for debating his theory, although it might get mentioned here.
In looking at their own state legislatures, I believe that our founders were keenly aware that the disconnect between rep and people widens as each districts get bigger, and the reps were going to become even more dependent on campaign money from self interest groups. This was before we had any parties.
This topic was the convention's most heated debate. There were those that wanted to set the magic number at 40,000 while others thought that even 30,000 was too big. Even Washington, who rarely said anything during the entire convention, weighed in on this. He ended up supporting the 30,000 figure although he thought the districts should be even smaller.
Currently, I am of the opinion that our founding fathers had it right when they came up with the 30,000 number. I think we need to figure out how to return to this mark.
Furthermore, I think we need to look at all districts within all levels of government. Regardless of the size used for our US House districts, other level districts certainly can be made smaller. And can be used as models for others to study.