Let’s restore fair representation

Partisan gerrymandering is finally on the ropes.

This long-running but deeply anti-democratic process of allowing politicians to choose their voters can be traced back to Patrick Henry. It has never been so toxic, we’ve never been this close to reform — but it’s just the first step toward fair representation.

The good news starts in Pennsylvania. Its state Supreme Court recently ordered an entirely new congressional map, determining that its 18 U.S. House districts — drawn to reliably send 13 Republicans and five Democrats to Washington — violated citizens’ right to free and equal elections.

Meanwhile, two potentially landmark cases sit before the U.S. Supreme Court. Both are aimed at convincing Justice Anthony Kennedy that a “clear and manageable” standard exists to determine when politicians draw themselves unfair advantages.

Last fall, the justices heard oral arguments in Gill v Whitford, in which a federal court found Wisconsin’s GOP-drawn assembly districts — which produced 60 Republicans and 39 Democrats in 2012, despite 174,000 more Democratic votes — to be unlawful.

Next week, the court will hear a First Amendment challenge in Benisek v Lamone, regarding an egregious Democratic gerrymander of a Maryland congressional district.

All this could go a long way to restoring partisan fairness in Congress. Right now, five swing states — Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — combine to send 49 Republicans and just 20 Democrats to Washington.

When voters are equally divided, it shouldn’t be possible for either side to collect more than 70 percent of the seats. We can, and must, end this practice that destroys competitive elections and forces our politics to the extremes.

But after, hopefully, courts put an end to partisan gerrymandering, it’s time to cure the representation problem in many other states — including Connecticut — where the entire congressional delegation is weighted unrepresentatively toward one party.

There are plenty of Republicans in Connecticut; 41 percent of the state voted for Donald Trump in 2016. No one, however, represents those voters’ interests in Congress. Not since Christopher Shays in 2006 has a Republican won a congressional race here.

Likewise, Massachusetts has elected just one Democratic governor since the days of Michael Dukakis – but there is not a single Republican in the Bay State’s nine-member congressional delegation.

Plenty of Midwest and Southern states have the opposite problem: If you’re a Democrat in Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah or Kansas, your views have zero voice in Washington.

That’s not right. In all, 15 states send a single-party delegation to Congress — that number has doubled over the last eight years, and has not been this high in almost 70 years. It’s time we consider this as undemocratic as partisan gerrymandering.

The problem in these states is not unfair district lines. It’s districting itself — our political geography combined with a single-member, winner-takes-all system. After all, it would be challenging to draw a Republican district in Massachusetts and Connecticut, or a Democratic one in Oklahoma, especially holding to traditional districting criteria like compactness and holding together communities of interest.

Fortunately, there is a creative solution, and all it would take is one law passed by Congress. The Fair Representation Act, sponsored by Virginia congressman Don Beyer, would transform our gridlocked politics.

It would replace our current single-member system with multi-member districts. We’d elect representatives proportionately, with ranked-choice voting, which would lower the threshold for winning office and provide representation for urban Republicans, rural Democrats, independents, and third-parties of all stripes. Women and candidates of color would have a better chance of getting elected, as well.

Under this plan, Connecticut would elect the same number of congressmen, five, but from one statewide district.

Given voter registration and election results in Connecticut, the state would likely send three Democrats and two Republicans to the U.S. House — a much fairer number. Democratic losses and GOP gains in New England, however, would be offset by more Democrats and fewer Republicans in Oklahoma, Utah and Kansas.

It will take serious reform to remake our divisive politics. Electing our U.S. House members in a different way would produce a different kind of congressman, who would then be incentivized to behave differently in Washington.

Candidates from uncompetitive states would have to talk to everyone, not just their own base. General elections would matter again, not just the party primary. That would liberate members to work together, rather than fear a compromise that might give rise to a challenge from angry activists. A Congress with more bridge builders might actually get things done.

There’s no easy fix for our democracy in these complicated times. It’s going to take new ideas to drain the extremism and make the system work again. Erasing district lines created to divide us might be the best place to start.

David Daley, of South Windsor, is the author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” (Norton) and a senior fellow at FairVote.