2 things. Uno> Senators aren't really representing half the State. I don't see why you'd want to divide the State.
Dos> It has occurred to me that PR districts for urban areas and single member districts for rural districts has a certain appeal. The Republicans might get a 2nd winner in NYC, for instance (they only win Staten Island, currently) if the whole 8 million were voting PR slates. Other people mentioned how in big rural areas, the sheer mechanincs of widespread campaigning encourage single member districts. This holds especially true for upstate New York. On the other hand, it's impossible to focus media campaigns on single Congressional Districts in New York City. I see ads for people running on the other side of town, which are different districts, regularly. -----Original Message----- From: Forest Simmons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 5:01 PM To: Adam Tarr Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: re:[EM] Gerrymandering and PR On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Adam Tarr wrote: <snip> > Ideally, I think that there should be no single-member districts for legislative > appointments. The disadvantages seem to outweigh the advantages. But in > certain cases (US Senate for example) there doesn't seem to be another option. In the case of the US Senate since there are only two senators per state it should be easy to limit gerrymandering: it's always possible to slice the population in half by a straight line cut, for example. [Watch out for the knife if there is an odd number of people in your state.] Forest ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. This communication is for information purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer to sell or as a solicitation of an offer to buy any financial product, an official confirmation of any transaction, or as an official statement of Lehman Brothers. Email transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. Therefore, we do not represent that this information is complete or accurate and it should not be relied upon as such. All information is subject to change without notice.
