Creative corruption

Tom Precious wrote today (Creative maps let State Senate's GOP keep power,  Nov 12 2018)  in the Buffalo News about about how the Republican Party maintains power in the NY Senate despite being a minority power.  And  y minority I mean that there are not enough of the statistically to justify the power and influence that they have in the Senate.

It's a creative process called gerrymandering.   Basically,  they drew the district lines for the Senate in such a way that makes it harder to vote them out of office and diminishes the power of their opponents.  Ridiculous. And illegal. And still done.

As a result we receive the crap for politics that we have today for New York. And the Republicans throw the blame on the Democrats and complain about it.

The article is great in its analysis but offers no solution to the corrupt and stale two party crisis that we  face in NY.  Seriously.  No solution is offered.  It's like going to a doctor and talking about a bad cough, scratchy throat, and shortness of breath and the doctor does not tell you to quit smoking cigarettes.

The solution is simple: Eliminate the districts and go to proportional representation.  A party's representative strength in the Assembly and Senate is  dependent upon the percentage of the popular vote that it wins.  A party must receive 5% of the vote in order to receive seats.  We can look at how the Europeans, Canadians, and other countries use the system and adopt what is proven to work.

There is one more benefit :  Parties receive money from  the state and they must use it to help citizens register to vote and civic education.  If they fail to do this,  they face consequences.  A former student of mine from Germany described how it works i  their country and they have voter participation rates much higher than we have.  The forst time President Obama was elected we were happy with a 60% turnout.  The German election at that time had a 74% turnout.  And their pundits were complaining that turnout was down.

The system we have is broken and it is up to us to demand a solution.
The more democratic solution is proportional representation.
The sooner we get it,  the better.