In a recent op ed, a fellow New Jersey resident seeks to remedy partisan gerrymandering, calling for "a national rule limiting how many times a state’s House map could split a county." It's a fine idea, but I have a crazy one, and this seems like a fine time to flesh it out.
I begin with the above author's premise of:
the basic idea of representation in the House: that districts should be drawn to represent distinct areas of a state with common legislative interests.
Well, we already have a geographic unit that groups together areas of a state with common legislative interests. We know they share legislative interests because these units have their own governments. I speak, of course, of counties.
Why counties? Because they mean something to people. Few know or really care about their Congressional or state legislative district (especially so for the latter; I could see some caring about the former if it often grabs the national spotlight), which change every decade, anyway. Everyone knows their county and many are proud of it.1 Election reporting would be so much easier and more intuitive for readers, as well. Civic engagement, or at least civic awareness, would thus increase.
More importantly, counties already exist. No modern political actor drew them, and they haven't charged for a long time (and we should pass a law to keep them this way forever). County districts would negate the need for complicated, expensive, high-stakes, corruptible redistricting every decade. No more hand-wringing over how nonpartisan or independent a redistricting committee isn't. No more pretending that the districts we create contain communities with common legislative interests, when really we have to break up cities and combine their pieces with less populated areas.
But for counties to work as legislative districts, we need proportional representation.2 Otherwise, if every county had the same number or reps, things would get very undemocratic, like they were back when NJ had the same number of state senators per county, regardless of population, in a hilarious cosplay as our malformed Federal Congress.
So here's my long-shot vision for redesigning democracy in New Jersey. I'll focus on our state legislature because it's sorely in need of reform and gets way less attention. I have no idea how this could happen nationally, or if it's desirable there, but I truly believe these would be ideal reforms for our state legislature, if not at all politically feasible.
Step 1: The Legislature
First, reshape NJ's state legislature. To make things simple for this hypothetical (and more democratic), abolish the State Senate so we have a unicameral legislature called the General Assembly.3
Next, enlargen the legislature. This too isn't absolutely necessary for my county district idea, but it's needed anyway, so we might as well do it in this hypothetical.
NJ currently has 120 state legislators (State Senators + General Assemblymembers) for 9,288,994 residents,for a representation ratio (RR) of 77,408 constituents per rep.4 That's high for a state, high even for similarly sized countries. Georgia, for instance, has almost 1.5 million more residents yet an RR of 45,389.
I'll select a totally random target for NJ's new RR: Sweden. They have a slightly larger population than NJ (over 10 mil), but an RR around 31,000 constituents per rep, on the lower end for countries in its size bracket.5 (Maryland's RR is similar.)
Matching Sweden's RR would give NJ 300 legislators. Now to divvy them up by county.
Step 2: Districts
If each county's share of this new state legislature matched its share of the total state population, representation would look like this:
The most populous counties would have the most representatives, but all counties' representation ratios would be quite similar. It's all so very democratic-sounding.
You might notice that the total number of representatives is 302, not our target of 300 from the previous section. See my methodology at the end of this post.
Step 3: Proportional Representation
So you have an election. What is the partisan makeup of your county's delegation? The current winner-take-all system would be ridiculous: suppose 62 candidates ran for Bergen County's 31 seats, and you had to either vote for 31 or rank all 62. No. Instead, do proportional representation (PR).
Let's look at Bergen County's popular vote in the 2025 gubernatorial general election as a rough example. Mikie Sherrill, the Democrat, got 55.23% of votes vs. Republican Jack Ciattarelli's 44.27%. That would give Bergen 17 Democrats and 14 Republicans under PR.6
For NJ as a whole: 172 Dem, 128 GOP, and 2 Other (if there was a single third party).
Of course, the above examples wouldn't happen under PR because such a system allows more than 2 or 3 viable parties. Sweden has 8. The exact design of NJ's PR system would influence this, but that's beyond the scope of this post. For that, start here, though note:
Consider the benefits and tradeoffs listed above, but don’t let the differences between systems hold you back from choosing one and pursuing it.
In the US, we like voting for individuals, so Single Transferable Vote (STV)7 could work in smaller districts, but big districts with as many as 31 seats might require a Party List system.
Closing Thoughts
More is needed to make New Jersey a real democracy--campaign finance reform, to start--but multi-member districts, a larger unicameral state legislature, and proportional representation would be huge steps forward. Of course, I'd like counties to act as our legislative districts, but feel free to ignore this idea as long as we advocate for the others.
Methodology
First, I picked a target representation ratio (RR) of 31,000, what Pew says Sweden has. This choice was arbitrary, but Sweden has some desirable features from a democratic standpoint: a unicameral legislature and a relatively low representation ratio for a country of its size. Its population is also not far from New Jersey's.
Next, I calculated the target total representatives, or the number state legislators NJ needs to reach the target RR: 300. Due to later calculations and rounding this won't be the actual total, but we need a starting point.
Finally, I assign each county a percent share of total representatives that matches its percent share of state population, rounding decimals using "schoolhouse" rules. The resulting total number of legislators is 302.