Endogenous Voting Weights for Elected Representatives and Redistricting

Justin Svec and James Hamilton ()
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James Hamilton: Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross

No 1307, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper analyzes the merits of a novel method of eliminating the power of a gerrymanderer that involves an endogenous weighting system for elected representatives. This endogenous weighting system ties the voting weight of elected representatives in the legislature to the share of the voters who voted for that representative's party and to the share of representatives elected from that party. If the weights are set correctly, it can be shown in simple voting models like Gilligan and Matsusaka (1999) that redistricting has no influence on the policy passed by the legislature. This benefit, though, is out-weighed by the fact that, in more realistic voting models, the gerrymanderer can manipulate the redistricting process to achieve greater policy bias than under the status quo.

Keywords: Redistricting; representative weights; gerrymander (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Published in Constitutional Political Economy, Volume 26, Number 4, December 2015, Pages 434-441.

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https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC1307- ... ousVotingWeights.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Endogenous voting weights for elected representatives and redistricting (2015)
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