Creating a Congress that better represents the people

To become or remain a member of the House of Representative you have to win an election in your district. The fact that the people are left with only two choices, the preferred candidate of the two major parties, is bad enough, but in most Congressional districts the people are left with a wide open field of one serious candidate. This is because the districts are drawn in ways intended to ensure that the same party wins every time, hence the person in power gets to draw up districts that are sure to keep them in power as long as they would like to remain in power. However, there is an alternative. In Iowa and Arizona, the border lines of Congressional districts are drawn up using neutral mapmaking rules. This has created a system where a disproportionate number of the competitive Congressional districts are in these two states. If we had this nationwide Congressmen would have to worry about doing what it takes to appease the people and Americans would have a Congress that is closer to the true desires of the American people. Below I have put a link to show the Congressional District map in two states which each have 5 representatives. Notice how the distict borders in Iowa are a much better way of organizing the state in regions whose boudaries make sense.
Iowa Congressional District map
Connecticut Congressional District map

Working toward better representation of the American people

One of the main reasons for the hateful partisanship in American politics today is that so many of our elected politicians are so hard core about there party. The reason so many are so hard core is that being so hard core about your party helps you win the party primary, so you get someone too left-wing facing someone too right-wing and we have to choose the lesser of two evils. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a centrist. A plurality of Americans are centrists. Yet if Arnold would have had to run in the primaries he would have had a much tougher time winning. So how did he do it? The California recall allowed him to skip the primary process altogether by running on a ballot that featured all candidates. This way the winner would be the choice of the people of California and not just the preferred candidate of one of the two major parties. Why can't we have this for all races? Some democracies have a system where candidates can skip the primary and puts all candidates on the ballot. Then the top 2 face off in a run-off if no one gets a majority. This allows all people to pick the final 2 candidates, including people in the vast American center. We should make this change national and make all candidates get the majority of the vote so people will have to focus on more than the base of their own party.