Why not get rid of Congressional districts altogether and switch to a STV (single transferable vote) system.
1. each party runs # of candidates up to the max across the state
2. cast your vote for a candidate; indicate your top 5 or so choices if you wish
3. candidates to win the top 9 seats (or however many CD's your state has) wins a Congressional seat to represent the whole state, (or unofficially whichever area/constituency he/she gained most votes from, if there is one.)
4. if your candidate doesn't need your vote to get over the election threshold, your vote goes to your #2 choice... and if your #2 choice doesn't need your vote, it goes to the #3 choice, and so on and so on.
Reasons to do this:
1. greater chance of third party candidates to get elected, because it now only needs approx. 1/9 of the statewide vote (or however many CD's your state has)
2. since 3rd parties have more of a chance, give voters more of a choice and increase voter participation and interest
3. realistically, a congressperson's constituency does not have to be focused in a certain geographic area; hog farmers could be spread across the state
4. get rid of gerrymandering
5. get rid of pork barelling
6. save state legislatures and GIS programmers a lot of time and effort that could be spent doing more productive things
Before 1980 IL used multi-member districts for the State House of Reps. Republicans even came out of Chicago on occasion. The voters chose to get rid of the system by referendum in favor of single member districts and the Legislature is arguably more partisan now than then.
One problem in using a whole state for a single district is that you can get a concentration from one area that fails to represent constituencies. We see that in many small cities that elect their councils at large. A well organized campaign ends up selecting a majority of members from one neighborhood (often where the "old-timers" live). Other parts of town complain but can't break the voting bloc in the key neighborhoods, who can turn out more vote.
