The article makes the argument that democrats will repeal the law that requires district-based representation if they get congress because they will be desperate enough to do so given the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. Also, this option is likely to be less politically controversial and more likely to yield immediate results than packing the Supreme Court.
Being more likely than packing the court still doesn’t seem likely. They haven’t shown any willingness to actually do anything of substance and this would be a huge thing to achieve. I hope I’m wrong though.
from the article for those curious about how it’s framed:
All this sounds like pie in the sky, if not “un-American,” right? Actually, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that mandates either single-member congressional district or first-past-the-post balloting. A 1967 congressional statute requires single-member districts. Legislation to repeal or replace it would arguably be easier to enact that some blatantly partisan Court-packing scheme or a ban on partisan gerrymandering that might not pass judicial muster.
It’s possible that Callais’s impact is so dire that it would make such radical reforms suddenly possible and perhaps even palatable across party lines. When it comes to gerrymandering, we are clearly entering the “hyper-partisan doom loop of escalating division and polarization” that led Drutman and others to embrace proportional representation and fusion voting. Donald Trump is the perfect expression of the prevailing style of politics, and Democrats who fear and despise him should think hard and think big about how to escape the poison.
The idea is proportional representation, and “could” here of course means if we grant that it had any real chance of happening.
The article makes the argument that democrats will repeal the law that requires district-based representation if they get congress because they will be desperate enough to do so given the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. Also, this option is likely to be less politically controversial and more likely to yield immediate results than packing the Supreme Court.
Being more likely than packing the court still doesn’t seem likely. They haven’t shown any willingness to actually do anything of substance and this would be a huge thing to achieve. I hope I’m wrong though.
from the article for those curious about how it’s framed: