Multi-Seat District Plans

January 2005

In order to show potential changes that could occur in the elections of members of the U.S. House of Representatives under a full representation system, FairVote's Jill Dannay has made sample plans for each state with at least three seats in the House.  Each state's October 2004 congressional districts have been combined into "super districts" of between three and five seats.  These sample plans show the potential effect of a move to multi-seat districts on both racial and partisan representation in the House.

In each state FairVote has assessed the likely impact on partisan results and voting rights of these particular plans.  Because these plans are based on congressional districts as of October 2004, which are often the results of gerrymandering, the proposed super district boundaries are not as compact as they could be.  The use of current congressional districts also limits our ability to achieve the best possible partisan representation and voting rights.  These issues could be easily rectified in a similar set of proposals that made use of sub-congressional district data.

A national analysis of the effects on representation in the House and each state's sample plan should soon be available.

View each state's multi-seat districting plan and analysis: