Age Based Congressional Districts

Federal congressional districts should be set based on age, not geography. The idea is simple: take the birthdays of all eligible voters in a state, order them, and set boundary lines between districts so that each district has the same number of voters. When you go to the polls you would show your ID and have your birthday determine your ballot. Only one other rule: a candidate would not have to be from within an age bracket to run to represent it.

This system has many advantages beyond breaking the Gerrymandering doom-loop:

Leaders from Multiple Generations

Today, geographically defined districts bolster our ossified gerontocracy, because the wealthiest folks within every district wield the connections, power, and funding to sway its elections, and thus or politics is overly sensitive to the concerns of this group. Age based districts would force parties and candidates to appeal to multiple generations, and would likely elevate a congress that is much younger, less wealthy, and more diverse.

Different Generations, Different Concerns

We have far more in common with people of our age than we do with people of our region. Pocketbook interests cluster by age cohort - whether it’s social security or AI in the labor market - the most potent concerns have age-based constituencies that are today dispersed across districts, without cogent representation (you could even call this “cracking” of the youth vote in gerrymandering terms… all districting is a choice!). Furthermore, districts exist as a concept to allow for people to have representation for common interests (historically, agricultural and manufacturing, etc). Yet, age tends to be a better predictor than geography when it comes to a wide range of issues (including foreign conflict, climate change, tax policy, social mores, and public benefit structures), issues that have not seen serious public engagement or debate in large part because the constituencies are dispersed. A politics that has to build cohorts across generations would be a politics that has to grapple with the preferences of people under 40, which today, I think you could argue are largely absent from national politics.

Congress of leaders, not of Parties

Many ‘solutions’ to gerrymandering give more control to parties - encouraging party loyalty and diminishing the personal element of elections. I like personal politics - it brings forward leaders that inspire and ignite us - sometimes through virtue, sometimes through bombast. A congress even more tightly run by parties will weaken the institution, turning a proving ground for our leaders into an organ that only serves parties and their interests. A congress full of intergenerational strivers, personally motivated and branded, is a far more engaging and discursive vision of politics, and is actually much closer to what our founders intended.

Unimpeachable

Any approach to districting that relies on discretion by politicians can be gamed. Even in proportional representation and various RCV proposals, there are core elements these plans that rely on the same act of drawing lines on maps, and that leaves the door open for manipulation. The brilliance of age based districting is that it is non-discretionary.

Isn’t that a great idea? Wouldn’t that be a better world?

How can we make it so?