this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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The senator limit would be ok, if not for the hard limit on representatives, which fucks over once again states with high population.
Somebody said states would secede if the coasts decided everything. Anybody ever researched this?
Is Texas a coast state? because they're the second largest state
They have a coastline but they're mad it's not the Gulf of 'Merica.
Number of people per representative should be set based on the state with the lowest population. CA should have 68 reps as they have 68.5 times the population of Wyoming.
Honestly we should set it so Wyoming has like 5 reps and then use that as a baseline. Increase the total number of reps 10 times and make each district manageable for one person to campaign in.
This would negate the problems with the electoral college and make gerrymandering much harder to pull off.
if we're going to do that why even have districts and just do party list proportional voting to elect a state's reps instead?
Districts are nice in that you have a local representative beholden to you(ish) that you can bring issues to.
assuming its not gerrymandered by a political party that sees you as an enemy
That's with the same total number of representatives, or will Congress need to be upgraded?
Yeah, that would mean getting rid of the Reappointment Act of 1929 and implementing the proposed Wyoming Rule
I don't think the Senator limit is okay. For instance, the city of Houston has more population than North and South Dakota combined (4 senators) and gets zero senators (Houston is consistently Democrat and is "represented" by two Republicans that do nothing for them).
That's the point of the Senate: land gets equal votes
The house is for population, but we fucked it by capping the total number of reps you can have there
Land doesn't have rights. It's just gerrymandering by another name. The problem works both ways. The rural fuckheads in California are also unrepresented. Harris County (where Houston is located) is larger than Rhode Island. Where is their representation? Why do the Dakotas (4 senators for virtually no population) get more political power than California or Texas? Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio get no representation despite a huge amount of population. Rural Californians get no representation despite outnumbering the Dakotas and Wyoming.
I agree, but the point is to have a section of the government where the 50 disparate governments that make up our union have equal say. This tends to get simplified to "land gets 2 votes" because the other part of Congress is population based
In the house, as I said already. Also, their 2 senators are part of their representation, they're still part of the state
Because the house has a limit on members. The senate is literally equal by design
Your issue seems to be a lack of understanding of how our legislative branch works because your complaints are all root issues of the House of Representatives and not the senate
I agree with your House argument, but I strongly believe that the design of the Senate was a major fuck-up. Senators are far more powerful than representatives, and I get none. A single house member cannot torpedo legislation the way a Senator can. North Dakota (population 780k) gets two. The 4.7M people in Harris County get none. That is a poor design.
Only if you're not an American or live in DC
Again the people in Harris county get 2 senators as their state senators represent them. And, again, senators do not represent based on population as that is the job of the house
Entirely irrelevant as they represent different things. Your representatives represent a portion of your population while your senators represent your state as a whole. The entire point of separating the state and population representation is to allow more perspectives when legislating: the house gives a perspective from closer to the people, the senate from a broader view
Again, it seems you fundamentally don't understand the split between house and Senate, why it exists and what it does to our governing system
It’s obvious why the Senate exists historically, and it’s also obvious that it’s inherently undemocratic.
I mean historically it existed mostly because states had much more autonomy and power, much like a city state or country. Until at least Lincoln that part of the system had a good logic to it. If they only went off of proportional representation they could basically ignore small states needs. In order to get states to agree to join the union, they had to build a country that would give all states a serious seat at the table.
The main reason people on the left hate it so much now is that it currently hurts us, but it's very much an equity vs equality argument. The system was set up to be equitable even if it isn't equal. Something the left typically supports and this meme touches on. I think the higher priority fix is the house, as it no longer even does what it was designed to do.
It's exhausting trying to discuss shit online with people with such a terrible understanding of the topic at hand
Senators are voted for and represent their entire state. They're the representatives of the state's general populace in a representative democracy
One human = one vote
Anything else is undemocratic and I think it’s morally reprehensible to support a system that values any one person above another for any reason.
100% agree with this we limited congress to the size of a building for some stupid reason
Second conversation. Why are some states large and others big shouldn't we chop them up more?
Massively agree on the states issue. The original idea was a bunch of little countries that only shared a handful of federal powers. That concept has completely fallen apart and now we're just an extremely poorly organized country with wildly different sized regions.
We either need to break every state into roughly the same size or we need to start merging too small states together until we have a collection of California sized states to manage.
For many people 'their state' has little meaning to them beyond sports teams and food trends. They have extremely low interest or engagement in state politics which is a major problem.
But this is an impossible dream, so we're pretty much stuck with this horrible arrangement.
Not enough chairs