The United States Supreme Court has recently outlawed term limits but there is more than one way to skin a Congressman. The problem of gerrymandering can be dealt with at the same time.
Every few years our legislatures make donkeys of themselves by redistricting. This is never done honestly so the courts have to waste their time and send things back for a few iterations. There is a saying that crooked politicians make the other one percent look bad. If you doubt it look at the redistricting process. But the standards of how to do it honestly are so clear that a simple computer program could do the job.
I propose having a computer program do the districting that districts should be on precinct boundaries, compact, contiguous and as different from the previous boundaries as they can be. All this is really easy.
The last requirement is the one that does term limits. It doesn't do them for the Senate but the Senate is supposed to be a stable body and having term limits there clearly violates its constitutional intent. The trick is that every congressman will face precinct boundaries radically different from what they were in the last election. For most politicians losing their district to redistricting is a death sentence. The plan won't work for the Senate because each state has two Senators and they generally don't run at the same time. This plan would disenfranchise some voters while double franchising others with non simultainious elections.
There would be no question of whether the job was done honestly, the program and its data would be public. Race wouldn't enter in because it wouldn't be entered as data. The same for party, wealth and religion.
Charles Fiterman Geodesic Systems
414 North Orleans Suite 410 Phone 312 832 1221 x223
Chicago IL 60610-4418 FAX 312 832 1230
http://www.geodesic.com
http://www.il.lp.org/html/1998candidates.html
"Augusts began a campaign to promote traditional family
values with fines for adultery. But he was famous for his
adulteries often seducing the wife and daughters of the same
man. Towards the end he became obsessed with deflowering
virgins and they were brought to the palace as young as
seven." Suetonius
