Diary (January 12, 2021)
Online diary of Karl Jones for Tuesday January 12, 2021.
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Disproportionate representation by smaller states
Both the Senate and the Electoral College give people in smaller states grossly disproportionate representation in the Federal government.
One could make the argument that letting smaller states have one or the other is a check against a so-called “tyranny of the majority.” Giving them both has effectively created a tyranny of the minority. Screw that. Let’s have at least some semblance of fair representation at the Federal level.
—Comment by user Brainspore @ Boing Boing
The House is supposed to be that proportional representation- more populous states have more representatives. However, due to gerrymandering and the structure of the Senate, the latter has vastly more power in the system, as do a minority of Republicans.
—Comment by user VeronicaConnor @ Boing Boing
The whole point of the house is for each person to have their local Congressperson to represent them in the federal government. That’s why districts are supposed to be small and compact, so you are close to your representation. Also why each house member wasn’t supposed to represent more than 30,000 people. He was supposed to be the guy you wouldn’t be afraid to write if you needed something done at the federal level.
That’s gone out the window in the modern era. Representatives have more like three quarters of a million people to worry about. A number so large that they end up divorced from local issues. Plus their districts are spread all over the place so there’s no clear population to represent. It’s a load of enclaves spread across the state. It’s arguable that the House of Representative’s original business model simply doesn’t scale to a country with 350 million people in it, but we are being poorly served by pretending that it still works instead of reworking it. Maybe some kind of two tier solution where everybody gets a local rep, but we don’t send all 1,200 to Washington at once.
—Comment by user jandrese @ Boing Boing
The point of the senate was to give proportionally larger representation to less populous states and make congress more conservative (harder to pass drastic changes). Then as now, there were major disagreements whether those are good or bad things.
The US government was designed by a wealthy, powerful, few who were trying to strike a balance between favoring democracy and being scared that would mean the loss of some of their power. The result is a strange mix of entrenched over-representation of the privileged few (wealthy, white, male, etc) while lauding the ideas of equality and democracy.
—Comment by user Scientist @ Boing Boing
Also it was a salve to states with economies based on slavery.
Now that slavery isn’t a thing, the senate is pointless.
—Comment by user Unintended @ Boing Boing
don’t forget guam, american samoa, and the native nations.
i don’t know the legality but i wonder whether it’s necessary to have a state to have a senator. at the very least, as a collective, federally recognized tribes deserve two. let them rotate around from nation to nation as they see fit.
unlikely solution number 2, have a few dem states break in parts while setting up their constitutions to basically continue as one. most big cities have more people than the dakotas. the state of columbus, or portland, or austin wouldn’t do so bad.
the whole division of what is or isn’t a state ( ex. alaska not pr ) is almost entirely about skin color.
—Comment by user gatto @ Boing Boing
If we are going to go down the path of reforming the Constitution, then I would look to other parliaments to see how a bicameral system could be implemented. The model I think would work best would be to make the Senate more akin to the House of Lords in the UK, or the Bundesrat in Germany.
—Comment by user fnordius @ Boing Boing
Over Her
Over Her / "Over There"
Oh the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming
And I won't be back 'til I'm over, over her